Samuel Kọ́láwọlé has emerged winner of the 2025 Whiting Award in the fiction category for his work ‘The Road To The Salt Sea’.
He is one of ten writers who will each receive $50,000 to help support their craft.
In his words on receiving the award:
“I feel so incredibly honored to be awarded the 2025 Whiting Award in Fiction for The Road to the Salt Sea. I am glad this novel is finding its way out in the world. I wrote the book I had always wanted to write about an issue important to me.”
Samuel Kọ́láwọlé was born and raised in Ibadan, Nigeria. His debut novel, The Road to the Salt Sea, was a finalist for the International Book Awards, longlisted for the 2025 Aspen Words Literary Prize, and is currently longlisted for the 2025 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel. He has also been shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Graywolf Press African Fiction Prize, and the UK’s First Novel Prize.
Kọ́láwọlé studied at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and holds a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing from Rhodes University, South Africa. He is also a graduate of the MFA in Writing and Publishing at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and earned his PhD in English and Creative Writing from Georgia State University. He teaches fiction writing full time as an Assistant Professor of English and African Studies at Pennsylvania State University. He recently joined the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers as a faculty member. He lives in State College, Pennsylvania.
The Road to the Salt Sea has been greeted to critical acclaim.
In the words of the Whiting Award selection committee:
“Samuel Kọ́láwọlé dances back and forth across the borders of genre to craft a propulsive and humane thriller, populated by unforgettable characters whom he presents with unthinkable choices. In the hands of this wondrous storyteller, yearning and thwarted ambition raise predicament to the level of tragedy. His portrait of immigrants on the move through and toward the unknown melds gripping narrative with indelible testimony.”
Since 1985, the Whiting Award, powered by The Whiting Foundation, is given annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama. The awards, of $50,000 each, are based on early accomplishment and the promise of great work to come. Though the writers may not necessarily be young (talent may emerge at any age), the grant ideally offers recipients a first opportunity to devote themselves fully to writing, and the recognition has a significant impact. Whiting winners have gone on to win numerous prestigious awards and fellowships, including the Pulitzer Prize.
Writers are shortlisted by a pool of nominators, which changes annually, and usually includes writers, professors, editors, agents, critics, booksellers, artistic directors of theatres, dramaturgs, and directors of literary festivals or reading series. Winners are chosen by a selection committee, a small group of recognised writers, literary scholars, and editors appointed every year by the Foundation.
