Come listen to the second MFA reading of the semester on Thursday, October 16. Readers will include prose writers Kiprop Kimutai, Nikhita Thomas, and Maggie Wu. A reception will follow.
Kiprop Kimutai is a Kenyan writer and winner of the 2023 Graywolf African Fiction Prize for his manuscript The Freedom of Birds, which is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2026. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in No Tokens, The Johannesburg Review of Books, Kwani?, Evergreen Review, Jalada Africa, Doek! and Lolwe. He is a 2023 Miles Morland scholar and was a finalist for the 2018 Gerald Kraak Award. In 2024, he was a speaker at Yale University's 2nd Genesis Epistemologies Conference and is currently nominated for the 2025 True Story Award for his essay about his residency in Saint Paul De Vence, where James Baldwin lived in for the final years of his life. In his fiction, Kiprop is interested in tackling the rich histories of the Rift Valley region of East Africa by researching and recreating its deep pasts, and imagining its possible futures.
Nikhita Thomas is a first-year prose candidate who grew up mostly in Bangalore, India. She reads. She draws. Sometimes writes in English. Loves a long list of ladies, especially Fran Lebowitz.
Maggie Wu is a writer, photographer, and pianist. Her fiction and essays have been published in DIAGRAM, Glass Mountain Magazine, and is forthcoming in 3:AM Magazine. Before her MFA, she received a Fulbright grant to Taiwan, where she taught English as a second language, and worked at Georgetown University as an AI policy researcher. She graduated from Amherst College in 2022 and calls Oregon home. You can find more of her work on her substack and website.