The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman - An Evening with Deesha Philyaw

About this event

To attend purchase a copy of The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman from Tombolo Books and your name will be added to the RSVP list. If you would like to bring a guest, you can grab a Guest Ticket here! This ticket is for two guests and comes with one copy of the book! Tombolo Books is thrilled to welcome award-winning author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, Deesha Philyaw, to celebrate her new novel The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman! Philyaw will be in conversation with local author and founder of Kitchen Table Literary Arts, Sheree L. Greer! Unflinchingly funny, frank, and splendidly unruly, The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman exults in the luscious, messy pleasure of finally feeling free. The event will take place at Coastal Creative located across the street from the bookstore at 2201 1st Ave S, St. Petersburg, FL 33712. More about The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman From the moment Scharisse Freeman ditched her humble roots and married a megachurch pastor fifteen years her senior, she’s been labeled too brash and too “of the world” by church folks who grudgingly accepted her into their fold, and too holy by her estranged childhood bestie Petra. Schar doesn’t have many allies, but that hasn’t stopped her from building an enviable business empire spanning books to clothing to branded products, and living the comfortable life her husband's power affords her. On the eve of her 40th birthday, Schar gets the final bit of validation she’s always dreamt of: a coveted invitation to participate in the First Lady USA pageant. This is her chance to be accepted by the other pastors’ wives—First Ladies—who are “like Jesus’ disciples if they had been a group of mean girls.” Finally, blissfully, the ice between Schar and the other First Ladies begins to thaw. But as the pageant nears, a sensational scandal breaks with Schar at its center, and her carefully curated life implodes. Schar faces down shame and terrible secrets from her childhood and is reminded that in the eyes of the church, optics can matter more than the truth. Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Story Prize, the LA Times Book Prize: The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. Deesha is a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow, a Baldwin for the Arts Fellow, a United States Artists Fellow, and co-host of two podcasts, Ursa Short Fiction (with Dawnie Walton) and Reckon True Stories (with Kiese Laymon). She is currently at work developing TV shows based on her short fiction. Sheree L. Greer is a writer, teacher, and arts administrator living in Tampa, Florida. She is the author of two novels, Let the Lover Be (Bold Strokes Books 2014) and A Return to Arms (Bold Strokes Books 2016). Her work has been published online and in print at the Bellevue Literary Review, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, Burrow Press Review, LezTalk Anthology, VerySmartBrothas, Autostraddle, The Windy City Times, Bleed Literary Journal, Current: An Anthology for Jackson, Mississippi, Windy City Queer Anthology: Dispatches from the Third Coast, and others. In 2014, she founded Kitchen Table Literary Arts to showcase and support the work of BIPOC women and femme-identified nonbinary writers and poets. Sheree holds an MFA at Columbia College Chicago and is a VONA/VOICES alum, Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice grantee, Yaddo fellow, and Ragdale Artist House Rubin Fellow. Her essay, "Bars" published in Fourth Genre Magazine, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and notably named in Best American Essays 2019, and her essay, "None of this is Bullshit" was published at The Rumpus and featured in "Memoir Mondays.” Her latest Pushcart Prize nominated work, “If You Scared Say You Scared,” was published in Bellevue Literary Review. A frequent collaborator with the 2nd Story Theatre Collective, Sheree teaches for several literary arts centers and organizations, namely The Porch in Nashville, TN, and Story Studio Chicago, where she serves as core faculty in memoir and was voted “Instructor of the Year” for 2023.

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  Deesha PhilyawAuthor
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• The True Confessions of First Lady FreemanDeesha Philyaw

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