[VIRTUAL] Deesha Philyaw and Megha Majumdar in Conversation

Bathed in accolades, Deesha Philyaw’s The Secret Lives of Church Ladies and Megha Majumdar’s A Burning are among the best fiction releases of 2020. The debut books of fiction for each author, both were longlisted for the National Book Award, and Church Ladies is one of the five finalists. Portraying experiences that we don’t see in literature frequently enough, these are essential reads, and the conversation between these two wonderful authors is not to be missed.

REGISTER HERE

Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, 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. Philyaw is also the coauthor of Co-Parenting 101: Helping Your Kids Thrive in Two Households After Divorce, written in collaboration with her ex-husband. Her work has been listed as notable in The Best American Essays series, and her writing on race, parenting, gender, and culture has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, Brevity, Dead Housekeeping, Apogee Journal, Catapult, Harvard Review, ESPN’s The Undefeated, Baltimore Review, TueNight, Ebony and Bitch magazines, and various anthologies. Philyaw is a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and a past Pushcart Prize nominee for essay writing in Full Grown People.

Megha Majumdar was born and raised in Kolkata, India. She moved to the United States to attend college at Harvard University, followed by graduate school in social anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. She works as an editor at Catapult and lives in New York City. A Burning is her first book. Follow her on Twitter at @MeghaMaj and Instagram at @megha.maj.