Episode 119 Notes and Links to Deesha Philyaw’s Work
On Episode 119 of The Chills at Will Podcast, Pete welcomes Deesha Philyaw, and the two discuss, among other topics, Deesha’s love of and obsession with books as a kid, her reading books above her age level, the shakeup she received in reading the “singular” James Baldwin, outstanding and innovative and inspirational contemporary writers, her college and post-college years loving literature but aiming for corporate work, her compulsion to write full-time, and themes and parallels between contemporary life and events from her standout short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies.
Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, won the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the 2020/2021 Story Prize, and the 2020 LA Times Book Prize: The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. The Secret Lives of Church Ladies focuses on Black women, sex, and the Black church, and is being adapted for television by HBO Max with Tessa Thompson executive producing. Deesha is also a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and will be the 2022-2023 John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi.
Deesha Philyaw's Website
Renee Simms Reviews The Secret Lives of Church Ladies for Los Angeles Review of Books
Buy the Award-Winning The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
Nadia Owusu’s Article for Slate: “The Secret Life of Deesha Philyaw”
Exciting News about the Upcoming HBO Series Based on the Story Collection!
At about 2:00, Sara Giorgi is shouted out as a strong editor, as Pete and Deesha talk about some fact-checking for her short story collection
At about 3:00, Deesha discusses early iterations of her short story collection
At about 4:35, Deesha responds to Pete’s wondering about ideas of “finished” and “unfinished” stories
At about 6:25, Deesha details her love of books and having her family nurture her love of words
At about 10:00, Deesha recounts stories of “obsessing” over books and school in her childhood
At about 11:45, Deesha talks about a favorite writer, James Baldwin, and his multifaceted and intersectional legacies
At about 15:40, Pete wonders about Deesha’s reading habits in her adolescent years
At about 19:00, Deesha talks about meaningful books, including The Autobiography of Malcolm X, that she read in high school and college, and about how writing for a career seemed so foreign to her
At about 21:50, Deesha references (very discreetly) the secret societies of Yale
At about 22:10, Deesha discusses her writing career developing slowly-starting as a hobby-in her late 20s, before accelerating with novel and short story writing
At about 23:45, Deesha mentions contemporary writers who inspire and challenge her, including Robert Jones, Jr., Maurice Ruffin, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Dantiel W. Moniz, and Dawnie Walton
At about 26:20, Deesha details how Robert Jones, Jr. has “revolutionized slave narratives”; Jabari Asim and Yonder is also mentioned as a book that does similar standout things
At about 29:35, Pete and Deesha discuss Deesha’s varied interests and varied styles of writing, and how her life experiences have informed her writing; this includes how focusing on writing helps her “keep perspective”
At about 32:45, Deesha discusses seeds for the short story collection, including how the book draws upon many childhood experiences with church
At about 35:00, Deesha gives the secret about hearing stories as a kid, and cites Toni Morrison’s “Imagination as bound up in memory” in explaining inspirations
At about 36:50, Deesha discusses connections between the collection’s epigraph and the stories themselves
At about 39:00, Deesha connects dots between two stories from the collection and Olivia’s role in them
At about 40:00, Pete and Deesha discuss the female gaze that is centered in much of the c
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