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Author Talk | Deesha Philyaw

Award-winning author Deesha Philyaw will discuss her much-anticipated novel, The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman, a satirical drama of megachurch scandal, shame, and freedom.

The wife of a popular and powerful megachurch pastor upends her charmed “rags-to-Rolex” life when her secretive past comes roaring into the spotlight—in this much-anticipated, splendidly unruly debut novel from Deesha Philyaw, author of the award-winning hit short story collection The Secret Lives of Church Ladies.

From the moment Scharisse Freeman ditched her humble roots and married a megachurch pastor fifteen years her senior, she’s been labeled too brash and too “of the world” by church folks who grudgingly accepted her into their fold, and too holy by her estranged childhood bestie Petra. Schar doesn’t have many allies, but that hasn’t stopped her from building an enviable business empire spanning books to clothing to branded products, and living the comfortable life her husband's power affords her.

On the eve of her 40th birthday, Schar gets the final bit of validation she’s always dreamt of: a coveted invitation to participate in the First Lady USA pageant. This is her chance to be accepted by the other pastors’ wives—First Ladies—who are “like Jesus’ disciples if they had been a group of mean girls.” Finally, blissfully, the ice between Schar and the other First Ladies begins to thaw.

But as the pageant nears, a sensational scandal breaks with Schar at its center, and her carefully curated life implodes. Schar faces down shame and terrible secrets from her childhood and is reminded that in the eyes of the church, optics can matter more than the truth.

Books will be available for sale and signing. 

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Author Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Story Prize, the LA Times Book Prize: The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. Deesha is a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow, a Baldwin for the Arts Fellow, a United States Artists Fellow, and co-host of two podcasts, Ursa Short Fiction (with Dawnie Walton) and Reckon True Stories (with Kiese Laymon). She is currently at work developing TV shows based on her short fiction.

Moderator Dr. Regina N. Bradley is an award-winning writer and researcher of the Black American South. She is Professor of English and African Diaspora Studies at Kennesaw State University, a faculty editor for Southern Cultures journal, and co-director of the Hip Hop Studies Consortium at Georgia State University. She is also an alumna Nasir Jones HipHop Fellow (Hutchins Center, Harvard University). 

Dr. Bradley is also the author of the critically acclaimed book Chronicling Stankonia: the Rise of the Hip-Hop South. Chronicling Stankonia explores how Atlanta, GA hip hop duo OutKast and hip hop influences the culture of the Black American South in the long shadow of the Civil Rights Movement. She is also the editor of An OutKast Reader, a collection of essays about OutKast, and co-editor of the third edition of That’s the Joint!: the Hip Hop Studies Reader with Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal.

Presented by Adult Services.

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