Nigerian author Teju Cole is a recipient of the 2022 Walter Channing Cabot Fellowship at Harvard University.  Cole joins a distinguished cohort of thirteen academics awarded this honor “for their outstanding publications.”

Cole, who is a Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing at Harvard, is honored for his latest book Black Paper: Writing in a Dark Time. The book was published 2021 by the University of Chicago Press and was named finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Black Paper is Cole’s second full-length essay collection. The twenty-five essays in the collection explore “ethical questions about what it means to be human and what it means to bear witness, recognizing how our individual present is informed by a collective past.” [Read excerpt here]

The Cabot Fellowship comes from a trust fund established in 1905 in honor of the American sculptor Walter Channing Cabot by his wife and children. The $10,000 fellowship is awarded for scholarly works by Harvard University faculty. Zambian-American author Namwali Serpell was a recipient in 2021, placing Cole in very fine company. Congratulations to Teju Cole!

See the full list of Fellows here.

 

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Photo by Teju Cole.