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!
Succeed2gether’s fifth annual Montclair Literary Festival will take place online on March 20 and March 21, 2021. See all of the talks by following us on Crowdcast here or visiting our website events page here.
The festival is a fundraiser for 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 Succeed2gether staff, 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.
