Chantal James lives in Washington, DC, and has been published across genres — as a poet, fiction writer, essayist, and book reviewer — in such venues as Catapult, Paste, Harvard’s Transition, the Bitter Southerner, and more. James’ honors include a Fulbright Fellowship in creative writing to Morocco and a finalist position for the Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize from the North Carolina Literary Review in 2019.

James will be in conversation with Deesha Philyaw, whose debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, won the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the 2020/2021 Story Prize, and a 2020 LA Times Book Prize: The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction; the collection was also a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. The Secret Lives of Church Ladies is being adapted for television by HBO Max with Tessa Thompson executive producing. Her work has been listed as Notable in the Best American Essays series, and her writing has appeared in neumerous publications such as the the New York Times, the Washington Post, McSweeney’s, just to name a few. 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.

Hosted by Politics and Prose in Washington, DC. Click here to register for this virtual event!