The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, Deesha Philyaw’s book of deliciously vibrant and rebellious short stories about sex and black women navigating social pressures, won the prestigious PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2021, and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction in 2020. What I love about Deesha’s writing journey is that she did so much other stuff before she even thought about writing. It was only really when she quit her more high-flying job and began teaching the creative processes of writing as an English teacher that Deesha began to learn those creative processes herself. She’s now 50 and her debut, that award-winning book, Church Ladies – which was initially roundly rejected by mainstream publishers – was published in the UK last year. It’s now being turned into an HBO show. 

Deehsa and I talk about how her mum’s life and death affected her writing, about learning to write as an adult and about trying again and again to write the novel that she kept on not getting quite right. I so enjoyed this interview and I hope you do too.

Do come find me on Twitter - @francescasteele - or Instagram - @francescasteelewrites - I'd love to hear your stories about self-doubt, rejection and – of course – success!

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