Olufunke Grace Bankole wins the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award for ‘The Edge of Water’

By Brian McNeill

Olufunke Grace Bankole has won the 2026 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, which honors an outstanding debut novel published during the preceding calendar year. Her winning book, "The Edge of Water," published by Tin House, is an emotionally resonant story of three generations of Nigerian women, and it explores family ties, religion, diaspora and prophecy.

Bankole will receive the award during a public event at VCU on Nov. 12. The event will involve a reading, a moderated discussion and a Q&A. Details of the event and additional materials will be made available at firstnovelist.vcu.edu/event/.

Bankole was one of three finalists for the prize, now in its 25th year. The other finalists were Karissa Chen for "Homeseeking" (G.P. Putnam's Sons) and Ethan Rutherford for "North Sun, or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther" (Deep Vellum).

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.

"The Edge of Water" is the winner of the Westport Prize for Literature as well as the Ploughshares John C. Zacharis First Book Award.

In the magazine Electric Literature, Mariah Rigg writes: "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 OK to let ourselves off the hook."

Bankole, a Nigerian American writer, is 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.

Bankole won first place in the Glimmer Train Short-Story Award for New Writers, and she was the Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Scholar in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Her honors include an Oregon Literary Fellowship in Fiction, a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant, a residency-fellowship from the Anderson Center at Tower View and a Pushcart Special Mention for her writing. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

The VCU Cabell First Novelist Award celebrates the VCU MFA in Creative Writing program's yearlong novel workshop - the first in the nation and one of the few still in existence. The winning author receives a $5,000 prize and participates in an event, traditionally in person, with two additional panelists, most often the agent and editor of the winning book. The event, open to all, focuses on the creation, publication and promotion of the author's first novel.

The VCU Cabell First Novelist Award is presented on behalf of VCU's MFA in Creative Writing program. Sponsors include the James Branch Cabell Library Associates, VCU Libraries, the Friends of VCU Libraries, the VCU Department of English and the VCU College of Humanities and Sciences.

Over 200 novels were submitted for this year's prize. A universitywide panel of readers, in addition to members of the Richmond community, reduced the submissions to a top 20 long list. From there, the list was considered by the MFA in Creative Writing students, who further narrowed the submissions from a top 10 short list to three finalists. 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.

In addition to Bankole, previous winners of the award have included: Anne de Marcken for "It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over," Alice Winn for "In Memoriam," Tess Gunty for "The Rabbit Hutch," Dawnie Walton for "The Final Revival of Opal & Nev," Raven Leilani for "Luster," John Englehardt for "Bloomland," Ling Ma for "Severance," Hernán Diaz for "In the Distance" and Jade Chang for "The Wangs vs. the World." A full list of winners can be found at firstnovelist.vcu.edu/winners/.

The 2026 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award is soon to announce a call for submissions for debut novels published in 2026, with a final submission deadline of Dec. 30, 2026. For more information, visit firstnovelist.vcu.edu/