The Lives of Writers

Tope Folarin

Episode Summary

Michael talks with Tope Folarin about his first trip back to Salt Lake City in 27 years, decolonizing art, the whiteness of autofiction in the critical sphere, directing The Institute of Policy Studies, his debut novel A Particular Kind of Black Man, the naming of main characters in autofiction, a next book in progress, and more.

Episode Notes

Michael talks with Tope Folarin about his first trip back to Salt Lake City in 27 years, decolonizing art, the whiteness of autofiction in the critical sphere, directing The Institute of Policy Studies, his debut novel A Particular Kind of Black Man, the naming of main characters in autofiction, a next book in progress, and more.

Tope Folarin is a Nigerian-American writer based in Washington DC. His debut novel, A Particular Kind of Black Man, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2019, and he has garnered many awards for his work, including the Caine Prize for African Writing and more recently the Whiting Award for Fiction.

If you'd like to hear Tope Folarin talk more about autofiction and whiteness (and more), check out his previous conversation with Teresa Carmody and Ryan Rivas on the Autofocus YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc7T0yQ45fg.

Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.