Caleb Ozovehe Ajinomoh

Caleb Ozovehe Ajinomoh was a finalist for the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize and has attended a residency at Art Omi, New York. His work appears in The Masters Review, QZ, The Offing, Necessary Fiction, Adda, AFREADA, CircleShow, AWP Writers’ Chronicle, and the Goethe Institute anthology: Limbe to Lagos. You can learn more about Caleb at www.calebajinomoh.com.

Alain Hirwa [AH]: What are you trying to accomplish in the MFA Program at Texas State?

Caleb Ajinomoh [CA]: I guess I’m here to learn more about how I function as a writer, learn from working writers about how they, too, function—the masterclasses are always excellent—and discover where I might or might not fit within today’s literary establishment.

AH: Why do you write?

CA: Because putting a sentence down and feeling your body vibrate with satisfaction is a feeling without rival. Making words electric. Making pages crackle with life. Being vulnerable, and in that way, better able to digest the vulnerabilities of others. Making real people out of letters, conjuring lives, arriving, finally, when writing goes well, at empathy. The unconditional pleasure of meeting other people who are nothing like yourself—“characters.” The poetry, I guess, of internal dialogue, the rewarding sanity of reflection, the privilege of passing through a multiplicity of realities, and somehow containing them all. This is why I write. 

AH: Caleb, that’s an inspiring answer. But how is the MFA program at Texas State helping you accomplish all that?

CA: People talk about how they’re in the MFA to give themselves more time to write. But what I’ve found is that without the discipline cultivated in the world outside the MFA, you don’t gain an hour more to do anything just because you’re inside. In any case, the program has given me the chance to make that daily consistent choice. And I am grateful for that. Something else that I consider a gift is the opportunity to connect with a group of people who—ideally—share similar ambitions in the literary community. It’s precious. 

The other great thing about the program is that it connects you with excellent people. For instance, my favorite professor at Texas State isn’t even in the program. She’s Dr. Julie Weng—kind, a genius, often willing to share the spotlight with her students. Tom Grimes has said nice things to me and about me. I can’t get enough of Naomi Shihab Nye’s brilliant presence. I’ve had pretty limited but overall good experiences with the rest of the faculty.

AH: Who are your favorite writers and what are your favorite books?

CA: Wilkie Collins was an early influence through his novellas. Guy du Maupassant’s stories. Chinua Achebe. Wole Soyinka’s, The Trial of Brother Jero, was formative. Susan Sontag—everything. James Baldwin—everything. Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Edith Wharton—everything. Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger is probably the most haunting story I’ve ever read. Louise Erdrich—everything. Penelope Lively. Anne Enright’s The Gathering. Rebecca Solnit—everything. Elfriede Jelinek. Julian Barnes’s The Lemon Table is probably my most revisited story collection. I could spam this interview with a longer list.

AH: What's next? Are you currently working on something new?

CA: I just finished a huge project—can’t say much about it yet. I can tell you about my next one though. It’s my Thesis, a novel. I’m some ways deep into it. That’s a project I’m very excited about.

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Summer 2021