Join us for the first Succeed2gether's Montclair Literary Festival event for 2021 – a talk by Deesha Philyaw about her debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. Her book was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction and for the Story Prize, and just this month was longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

It focuses on Black women, sex, and the Black church and features four generations of characters grappling with who they want to be in the world, caught as they are between the church’s standards and their own needs and passions.

Deesha will be in conversation with Dionne Ford, co-editor of the anthology, Slavery’s Descendants: Shared Legacies of Race and Reconciliation, and author of the forthcoming, Finding Josephine.

All authors appear for free and the best way to thank and support them is by buying their books! Books can be purchased from Festival partner Watchung Booksellers here.

Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction and for The Story Prize (2020/2021), and longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The Secret Lives of Church Ladies focuses on Black women, sex, and the Black church. Deesha is also the co-author of Co-Parenting 101: Helping Your Kids Thrive in Two Households After Divorce, written in collaboration with her ex-husband. Her work has been listed as Notable in the Best American Essays series, and her writing on race, parenting, gender, and culture has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, McSweeney’s, among many other esteemed publications. Deesha is a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and a past Pushcart Prize nominee for essay writing in Full Grown People.

Succeed2gether’s Montclair Literary Festival will host a special series of author events, Global Voices on March 20 and March 21, 2021, featuring authors and poets from England, Scotland, Ireland, Korea, Iran, Dubai, Sri Lanka, Ecuador, and Spain.  The fifth annual Montclair Literary Festival will take place on Saturday October 2, 2021, with a combination of live and online events.

See all of the talks by following us on Crowdcast here or visiting our website events page here.

Any proceeds from the festival benefit parent organization,  Montclair-based non-profit Succeed2gether, which offers after-school one-on-one tutoring and enrichment classes with the aim of closing the education and opportunity gaps in Essex County, NJ. You can read more about Succeed2gether and the festival at www.succeed2gether.org.

The festival organizing committee wishes to thank event partners Montclair Public Library and Watchung Booksellers, and festival sponsors Rao's, West of Hudson Realty Group, Jill Williams (Ameriprise Financial), Ferguson Dental, the County of Essex, and community members.

Deesha Philyaw "The Secret Lives of Church Ladies" with Dionne Ford