A Coup, the third novel in Phyllis Skoy’s Turkish Trilogy (Black Rose Writing 2023) follows a young woman in Turkey. In the first book of the trilogy, Adalet, who has found new friends after a devastating earthquake killed her parents, destroyed their home, took her unborn baby, and left her scarred for life. Her husband leaves her for another woman, and as part of the divorce agreement, she’s forced to live far from the city. Now in the third book, Adalet is back in the city, visiting Nuray, a college friend who runs a small women’s magazine. It’s not long after an attempted coup against Erdogan, a strongman who is set to crush all opposition, and police suddenly show up and throw Nuray, her fellow journalists, and Adalet into a notorious prison. They’re in separate, filthy and horrifying cells, and Adalet has to confront the possibility of never getting out alive. This is a novel about regular people trying to live their lives in the aftermath of Turkey’s takeover by a populist authoritarian leader.

Phyllis M Skoy’s first short story, “Life Before,” appeared as the Discovery of the Year in Bosque, 2013. What Survives, the first novel in the Turkish Trilogy (IP Books) was short listed for the Santa Fe Writers Project, a finalist in the New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards, and First Runner Up in the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize Short List. In 2022, Black Rose Writing reissued What Survives and published the prequel, As They Are. A Coup, the third novel in the trilogy, follows the lives of two women in the aftermath of the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, a country which fascinates her. Myopia, A Memoir (IP Books 2017) describes what it was like to grow up with a refugee father still unknowingly consumed with the fears and struggles of his past. The author of various published short stories and essays, Skoy is a retired psychoanalyst who practiced in both New York City and Albuquerque before her retirement in 2018. She specialized in working with the deaf, with children, and with adults suffering from depression, anxiety, and trauma. She currently resides in Placitas, New Mexico with her husband and her Australian Cattle dog.

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