Uche Okonkwo will read from her debut short story collection from Tin House, A Kind of Madness.  An Oprah Daily Most Anticipated Book of 2024, A Kind of Madness explores themes of community expectations, familial strife, and the struggle for survival. She will be joined in conversation by Iowa Writers’ Workshop 2024 MFA in Fiction graduate Reyumeh Ejue. “To read Uche Okonkwo’s A Kind of Madness is to have an experience: of complex characters grappling with life’s many troubles, of a robust culture, of history, of the battle between the domestic and the public, and all the big themes of life woven together. Like Jhumpa Lahiri, Okonkwo’s mastery of the form is as rich as some of the short story’s best practitioners and deserves every recognition it is sure to get.”― Chigozie Obioma

Uche Okonkwo’s stories have been published in A Public Space, One Story, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019, and Lagos Noir, among others. A former Bernard O’Keefe Scholar at Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and resident at Art Omi, she is a recipient of the George Bennett Fellowship at Phillips Exeter Academy and a Steinbeck Fellowship. Okonkwo grew up in Lagos, Nigeria. She has an M.F.A. in Fiction from Virginia Tech and an M.A. in Creative Writing from University of Manchester, UK. and is currently pursuing a creative writing PhD at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Reyumeh Ejue is a novelist studying at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Originally from Cross River State, Nigeria, he lives in Iowa City.