Angela Ajayi and Keith Lesmeister will read from works in progress to open the Cornell College's Winter 2022 MFA Program Residency. They will be in conversation with Rachel Swearingen.

ANGELA AJAYI’s first story, “Galina,” published in Fifth Wednesday Journal, won the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. Her essays, book reviews and author interviews have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Common
Online, Wild River Review and the Minneapolis Star Tribune where she is a contributing book critic. A former book editor, she also teaches writing classes at the Literary Loft Center. Her short story, “Our Beautiful Ukrainian Mothers,” recently appeared in Pleiades. She's at work on her first book, a novel-in-stories that explores her roots in Nigeria and Ukraine.

KEITH LESMEISTER is the author of the story collection We Could’ve Been Happy Here. His fiction has appeared in American Short Fiction, Gettysburg Review, New Stories from the Midwest, North American Review, Redivider, SLICE, Terrain.org, and many others. His nonfiction has appeared in The Good Men Project, River Teeth, Sycamore Review, Tin House Open Bar, Water~Stone Review, and elsewhere. He received his M.F.A. from the Bennington Writing Seminars and serves as editor of Cutleaf. He lives in Iowa’s Driftless region.

Please email lnieman@cornellcollege.edu for a link to the Zoom event.