Omotola Abraham

Assistant Professor
459 Lucas Hall
314-516-5541
oaq36@umsl.edu

MFA, Iowa Writers Workshop, University of Iowa

Tola Abraham is an Assistant Professor in the department of English. Originally from Lagos, Nigeria, she is the author of the novel Black Sunday. According to the Chicago Review of Books; "Abraham’s gift as a writer is her ability to simultaneously see peoples’ lives as both stories and as something more than narrative". A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in LitHub, Electric Literature, Catapult, The Des Moines Register, The Nigerian Literary Magazine, and other places. She teaches creative writing workshops; focusing on short stories, literary novels and global speculative fiction.

Tola Abraham is a fiction and non-fiction writer. She is the author of the novel Black Sunday, selected by the Midwest Booksellers Association as a February 2020 book of the month . A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in LitHub, Electric Literature, Catapult, The Des Moines Register, The Nigerian Literary Magazine, and other places.

Book Publications

Black Sunday, 2020 ( Catapult, Canongate)

Other Writing

The Des Moines Register, Catapult Magazine, Electric Literature, Lithub.

Read Tola Abraham online:

We need to talk about Snails

How to be a Stupid Girl in Lagos

Courses Tola Abraham Teaches:

English 5110: Graduate Workshop in Fiction

English 5950 : Special Topics

Tola Abraham on Teaching MFA Workshops

"My first concern as a creative writing professor is curating an environment amenable to sustained creativity.

The workshop is therefore not just a space for manuscript analysis; where we find and submit to the chopping block what is not working. It also is a space for making plain the vision, identifying the main goal of each manuscript. I try to identify the central working idea of each manuscript as well as the most significant barriers to the successful execution of that idea. I want my students to come away from each workshop not only with stronger manuscripts but also equipped with more insight into their own personal creative ambitions as well as with all the tools needed to achieve them”.

Tola's List of  Recommended Novels and Story Collections:

• 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World - Elif Shafak
• A People's Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers- Victor LaVelle (Editor)
• A visit from the goon Squad- Jennifer Egan
• Americanah- Chimamanda Adichie
• Bad Dreams and other Stories - Tessa Hadley
• Barracoon : the story of the last "black cargo" / Zora Neale Hurston
• Disgrace- J.M Coetzee
• Exit West- Mohsin Hamid
• Gingerbread- Helen Oyeyemi
• Homegoing- Yaa Gyasi
• Kindred- Octavia Butler
• Kintu- Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
• Lincoln in the Bardo- George Saunders
• Nickel Boys- Colson Whitehead
• Open City- Teju Cole
• The Bastard of Istanbul- Elif Shafak
• The Shadow King- Maaza Mengist
• The Twelve tribes of Hattie- Ayana Matthis
• The Water Dancer- Ta Nehisi Coates