Event
Event
Olufunke Grace Bankole, winner of the 2026 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award for The Edge of Water, gives a reading and participates in a moderated Q&A session about the writing and publishing of her book on Nov. 12, 2026 at 7 p.m.
The Edge of Water is the winner of the Westport Prize for Literature as well as the Ploughshares John C. Zacharis First Book Award.
Mariah Rigg writes in Electric Literature, “Exploring the narrative powers of choice and betrayal, the complexity of identity and belonging, and the many revisions that take place across a family and a life, The Edge of Water asks the question of how much we owe our loved ones, how much we owe ourselves, how much we control our destiny, and when it’s okay to let ourselves off the hook.”
The event is free and open to all and will be held in person but will also be live streamed through Zoom. The in-person location will be James Branch Cabell Library, Room 303, 901 Park Ave., Richmond, Va. 23219. Parking is available for a fee in the West Broad Street, West Main Street and West Cary Street parking decks.
About the Author
Olufunke Grace Bankole is a Nigerian American writer. A graduate of Harvard Law School, and a recipient of a Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship, her work has appeared in various literary journals, including Ploughshares, Glimmer Train Stories, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Letters, The Antioch Review, and Stand Magazine. She won the first-place prize in the Glimmer Train Short-Story Award for New Writers, and was the Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Scholar in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She has been awarded an Oregon Literary Fellowship in Fiction, a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant, a residency-fellowship from the Anderson Center at Tower View, and has received a Pushcart Special Mention for her writing. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
Sponsors
The VCU Cabell First Novelist Award is presented on behalf of VCU’s M.F.A. in Creative Writing program. Sponsors include: the James Branch Cabell Associates, VCU Libraries, the Friends of VCU Libraries, the VCU Department of English and the VCU College of Humanities and Sciences.
2026 Winner
Twenty Fifth Annual Award
The Edge of Water
Olufunke Grace Bankole
ABOUT The Edge of Water from the publishers website
According to the publisher’s official synopsis of The Edge of Water:
Set between Nigeria and New Orleans, The Edge of Water tells the story of a young woman who dreams of life in America, as the collision of traditional prophecy and individual longing tests the bonds of a family during a devastating storm.
In Ibadan, Nigeria, a mother receives a divination that foretells danger for her daughter in America. In spite of this warning, she allows her to forge her own path, and Amina arrives in New Orleans filled with hope. But just as Amina begins to find her way, a hurricane threatens to destroy the city, upending everything she’d dreamed of and the lives of all she holds dear. Years later, her daughter is left with questions about the mother she barely knew, and the family she has yet to discover in Nigeria.
Exploring the love of a determined mother and dreaming daughter who do not say enough to each other until it is too late, the detangling of Yoruba Christianity, traditional religion, and folklore, and the tellings of three generations of daring women—through times of longing, promise, and romance, as well as heartbreak—Olufunke Grace Bankole’s The Edge of Water is a luminous debut novel about a young woman brave enough to leave all she knows behind, and the way her fate transforms a family destined to stay together.
Judges: The final round of judging included the MFA students and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Committee, with the previous year’s winner, Anne de Marcken, acting as a tie-breaking vote if needed.
Finalists: Homeseeking by Karissa Chen (G.P. Putnam's Sons) and North Sun, or the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther by Ethan Rutherford (Deep Vellum)