Mississippi Valley State University is excited to announce that its Fall 2024 Commencement Exercise will take place at 8 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 14, 2024, in the R.W. Harrison Complex.
This year’s commencement speaker will be MVSU alum. Exodus Oktavia Brownlow, Associate Editor at Fractured Lit and Editor-in-Chief of The Loveliest Review. While at MVSU, Brownlow earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English.
A native of Blackhawk, MS, Brownlow’s work extends well beyond Mississippi. She has published or has forthcoming pieces with Electric Lit, West Branch, Denver Quarterly, F(r)iction, BOOTH, CRAFT, and many others.
Recognized for her exceptional writing skills, Brownlow's works "Chicken-Girls and Chicken-Ladies and All the Possibility of Pillowcases" and "It's 5 a.m.-ish, and My Father Tells Me A Story From His Time in Singapore" were included in Best Microfiction 2021 and 2022, and her piece "The Terrible Darling" was selected as a Wigleaf Top 50 of 2022. Additionally, Brownlow’s essay, "When the World Was Ending We Wore the Cornrows, We Twisted Our Coils, and We Waited," was chosen as notable in Best American Essays 2024.
Thriving in her writing career, Brownlow’s accomplishments continue to open doors for further opportunities and personal growth. In 2022, she received The Changing American South fellowship from the Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. In 2023, Brownlow was awarded a Mississippi Arts Commission Grant for an Individual Nonfiction Artist Fellowship.
Brownlow is also the author of a fiction chapbook, Look at All the Little Hurts of These Newly-Broken Lives and The Bittersweet, Sweet and Bitter Loves, published by Ethel Zine and Press in Spring 2023. Additionally, 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?—a Mississippi Top Ten Reads pick from The Clarion Ledger debuting at #6—was published by ELJ Editions in Summer 2023.