Miriam and Deesha discuss what her life might have been like if, after catching the man who she’d just started dating in a devastating lie, she had walked away instead of staying with, and ultimately marrying him. Along the way they discuss the shame that exists around loneliness, the importance of small surprises, and some handy tips for spotting dating app red flags.
Deesha Philyaw’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. In addition to winning all the awards, the collection, which focusses on Black women, sex, and the Black church, is being adapted for television by HBO Max. Deesha is also a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and will be the 2022-2023 John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi.
Make sure to subscribe to hear the rest of Season 2 – in each episode, Miriam Robinson interviews a guest about a path their life might have taken and together, step by step, they write the stories of their unlived lives.
Produced by Neil Mason
#MyUnlivedLife
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