Masterclass with Exodus Oktavia Brownlow

As the MSA Literary Department as gears up for National Novel Writing Month’s Young Writers Program, Exodus Oktavia Brownlow will discuss essential novel-writing techniques, her real-time strategies for crafting a compelling novel, effective time management when taking on longer fiction projects, and more. Throughout the month of November, MSA Literary students will be writing their own novellas and novels as they participate in NaNoWriMo.

Exodus Oktavia Brownlow is a Blackhawk, MS native. She is a graduate of Mississippi Valley State University with a BA in English, and Mississippi University for Women with an MFA in Creative Writing.

Exodus has been published or has forthcoming work with Electric Lit, West Branch, Denver Quarterly, F(r)iction and more. She has been nominated for Best of The Net, Best MicroFiction, Best Small Fictions and a Pushcart Prize. Her piece “Chicken-Girls and Chicken-Ladies and All the Possibility of Pillowcases” will be included in Best MicroFiction 2022. Her piece “The Terrible Darling” is featured as a Wigleaf Top 50 2022 selection. She is the recipient of the 2022 “The Changing American South” fellowship at the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow and serves as an Associate Editor with Fractured Lit.

Her debut fiction chapbook—”Look at All The Little Hurts of These Newly-Broken Lives and The Bittersweet, Sweet and Bitter Loves”—is set for publication with Ethel Zine and Press in Spring of 2023. Her debut collection of essays–“I’m Afraid That I Know Too Much About Myself Now, To Go Back To Who I Knew Before, And Oh Lord, Who Will I Be After I’ve Known All That I Can”–is set for publication with ELJ Editions in Summer of 2023.