Afabwaje Kurian is the author of the novel BEFORE THE MANGO RIPENS, which was a finalist for the 2025 Aspen Words Literary Prize and the 2025 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction and was also longlisted for the 2025 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Afabwaje received her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her short fiction has appeared in Guernica, McSweeney’s, Callaloo, The Bare Life Review, Joyland Magazine, and other publications. She has served as visiting faculty at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and taught fiction at the University of Iowa and for the International Writing Program.
While at MWC, Afabwaje will be working on a novel about a woman who flees from Nigeria to America to escape a short-lived polygamous past and her involvement in the murder of her co-wife. The novel will explore the woman’s regrets as she struggles to come to terms with her responsibility in the murder and her complicated past. Afabwaje hopes to experiment with structure and point of view.