Shola von Reynolds is a Scottish-Nigerian writer and recent graduate of the MLitt in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow which was completed through the Jessica York Writing Scholarship and other grants. Shola remains in the city and is working to the completion of LOTE, a debut novel which follows present-day narrator Mathilda’s fixation with the forgotten black Scottish modernist poet and socialite Hermia Druitt. Mathilda has to navigate her way through a history of occult Lotophagi societies, interwar hedonism and a present replete with sinister critical theorists, saboteurs and a surreal artists’ residency. In particular, the novel is concerned with the contemporary depiction of writers, artists and aesthetes of colour in Europe prior to WWII.
Shola writes widely around “race, ornament, beauty(!), and gender”, has written articles for AnOther and i-D, and is presently working on an extended essay on the politics of ornament, the art of labour-evasion and queer black extra-aesthetics.