It’s time for our WOMAN WARRIOR tribute post, done in the spirit of Maxine Hong Kingston. I hope that by presenting women writers, creators, and leaders here, that we can learn, better our own lives, and change our communities.

Today’s WOMAN WARRIOR is award winning author of short story collection, THE SECRET LIVES OF CHUCH LADIES.

Please meet Deesha Philyaw 👩🏿📚

@deeshaphilyaw’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 collection focuses on Black women, sex, and the Black church, and is being adapted for television by HBOMax with Tessa Thompson executive producing. Learn more at: https://lnkd.in/grpcGGW

✨ How did you come to author your own life? ✨

“Growing up, my dream life was a standard American dream life: Go to college, get married, have kids, have professional success. In 2005, I was a 34-year-old stay-at-home mom on the brink of divorce, trying to figure out how I would make a living as a writer. That same year, my mother, my father, and my grandmother (who helped raise me) all died. Watching my mother die of cancer at age 52 gave me a sense of urgency about my writing, as well as permission to write how and what I want, and to live how I want, unapologetically.”

➡️ Visit https://lnkd.in/grpcGGW to learn more about this incredibly talented woman, warrior and writer.

And if you want to read and learn from–and maybe even meet–writers like this, please register for classes at drstephaniehan.com

~empowering women through narrative~