Deesha Philyaw, author of the story collection The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, discusses the simplicity of binaries and proposes nuance as an alternative. The concept of nuance is a running theme throughout, as Deesha and I examine the growing interest of reading Black authors in the current climate, the lack of moralizing judgments in her nine stories, the interaction between the church and religion, science, and self-understanding, and the sociality of food.