LIFTed Literary Festival Archive Panels with PHILLIP B. WILLIAMS and WOLE TALABI in conversation with Karis McPherson, BEYOND BOUNDARIES PANEL 3

Phillip B. William is an author from the United States. He is the winner of the 2017 Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a 2017 Lambda Literary award. He is also the recipient of a 2020 creative writing grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a 2017 Whiting Award, and a 2013 Ruth Lilly Fellowship. He serves as a faculty member at Bennington College and Randolph College low-res MFA.

Introduces us to an enigmatic woman named Saint, a fearsome conjuror who, in the 1830s, annihilates plantations all over Arkansas to rescue the people enslaved there. She brings those she has freed to a haven of her own creation: a town just north of St. Louis, magically concealed from outsiders, named Ours.

WOLE TALABI is an engineer, writer, and editor from Nigeria. at Clarion West Writers Workshop online and earned her BA at Cornell University. He has been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards, as well as the Caine Prize for African Writing and he has won the Nommo award for African speculative fiction and the Sidewise award for Alternate History. He currently lives and works in Australia.

His Novel is: Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon

A mythic tale of disgruntled gods, revenge, and a heist across two worlds, Shigidi is a disgruntled and demotivated nightmare god in the Orisha spirit company, reluctantly answering prayers of his few remaining believers to maintain his existence long enough to find his next drink. When he meets Nneoma, a sort-of succubus with a long and secretive past, everything changes.

LIFTed Literary Festival: PHILLIP B. WILLIAMS and WOLE TALABI in conversation with Karis McPherson, BEYOND BOUNDARIES PANEL 3