The MFA Reading Series: Gothataone Moeng

The 2023 Creative Writing MFA Reading Series presents writer Gothataone Moeng, “a new force in the literary landscape” (Publisher’s Weekly, starred review). She will give a reading at 7:30 PM on Thursday, April 13, 2023, in the Great Hall in the Hemingway Center. All MFA Reading Series events are free and open to the public.

Gothataone Moeng’s debut short story collection, “Call and Response,” explores complex family dynamics in contemporary Botswana. Set mainly in the author’s hometown of Serowe and the Botswanan capital of Gaborone, the stories examine the inner lives of girls and women. Kirkus Review calls the collection, “A lovely debut brimming with deeply felt and well-rounded stories” (starred review). Publisher’s Weekly calls the book “lyrical and poignant” and says, “The author brings insightful prose and a distinctive voice to these layered stories, demonstrating deep knowledge of her characters and care for their worlds. Moeng is a new force in the literary landscape.”

Born in Serowa, Botswana, Gothataone Moeng authored the story collection “Call and Response” (Viking, 2023). A 2022-2023 Fiction Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and a 2018-2020 Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford University, she holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Mississippi. Her writing received fellowships and support from Tin House, where she served as a 2019 Summer Workshop Scholar, and from A Public Space, which selected her as a 2016 Emerging Writer Fellow. Her writing appears in Ploughshares, The Virginia Quarterly Review, American Short Fiction, One Story, A Public Space, and The Oxford American, among other journals.