It was also a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. Philyaw’s own debut collection “The Secret Lives of Church Ladies” was famously rejected by every publisher approached except one, West Virginia University Press, before going on to win prizes that included the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the 2020/2021 Story Prize. People are hungry for these stories.” Books by Kiese Laymon, Robert Jones, Jr. “We can give a boost and say, Look, these books do sell,” she says. That’s always in fashion, to be about each other’s business and sharing the wealth. That’s something that is never about a trend. “As a community, we can certainly uplift each other. We didn’t just suddenly become worth investing in or worth reading we always have been,” she says. And so we are.”īlack writers and writers of color are often told there isn’t a market for their work, so publishers don’t aggressively market and promote their books, which hurts sales, she says. She literally said, To hell with that! Look out for each other. This is why what Toni Morrison said is so radical. “This idea that another writer’s success is a threat to our own. “Some writers buy into that,” she continued.

This mythology that we are interchangeable and that there can only be one. “This idea that publishing feeds us that we should see each other as competition also pits Black writers against each other. “Our hope is that this effort inspires other writers to view each other through the lenses of care and community, instead of competition,” she said via text after our conversation.

While she’s pleased with the interest in the project – noting with pride that the National Book Foundation retweeted the #LIT16 thread – Philyaw makes one thing very clear.

Jamila Minnicks, “Moonrise Over New Jessup.” (Courtesy of Deesha Philyaw / Lit 16)ĭebut authors, Philyaw says, need all the love and support they can get, so that’s what LIT 16 aims to provide to its inaugural cohort:ĭanté Stewart, “Shoutin’ in the Fire: An American Epistle” ĭavid Dennis Jr., “The Movement Made Us” “If we – we being Robert, Kiese and I – use our platforms and the power we now have as a result of the success of our books to empower these writers and to give their books a fighting chance, that’s exactly what we want to do.” The inaugural Lit 16 writers. “We are doing what Toni Morrison told us to do, which is to use our power to empower someone else,” says Philyaw during a phone interview Thursday. The idea is to team with booksellers, podcasts like The Stacks and Books Are Pop Culture and other literary-minded outlets to bring these debut works to a wider audience, build a support network and sell some books. LIT 16 is a quarterly reading series that highlights the work of 16 debut authors. On Wednesday, author Deesha Philyaw, along with writers Kiese Laymon, Robert Jones Jr., and a growing band of contributors, announced the launch of a new literary endeavor.

The Lunar Housewife by Caroline Woods