WITS Study Hall
WITS Study Hall is a collaborative learning space for adults to actively participate in anti-racist conversation and enjoy the works of writers of color. We focus not just on anti-racist discourse but also on celebrating the range of genres and stories by BIPOC authors.
WITS Study Hall is open to all readers. You can sign up to join our virtual meetings, or use this framework to start your own book club. Whatever your engagement, we hope you join us in this important reading.
Previous Sessions
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.
Philyaw 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.
Her next two books include her highly anticipated debut novel The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman (Mariner Books, 2026), and her second collection Girl, Look, a “poignant new collection, giving a vivid snapshot of the interior lives of Black women across generations, drawing readers to consider Black women and girls’ vulnerabilities, invisibility, and beautiful contradictions, in a post-COVID, post-Breonna Taylor world.”
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
by Deesha PhilyawJoin us on March 25 at 5 p.m. CT to discuss The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw, facilitated by award-winning writer and creative director Amber J. Phillips.
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies explores the raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good. Nine stories featuring four generations of characters who grapple with who they want to be in the world, the collection was praised as “luminous stories populated by deeply moving and multifaceted characters,” by Kirkus Reviews, and “addictive while also laying bare the depth and vulnerability of Black women,” by The Observer.
“This is hands-down one of the best short story collections I have ever read and it explores the multitudes Black women contain.” - S. Zainab Williams, Book Riot Review
“In this year of constriction and pain, juicy goodness bursts from every page of Deesha Philyaw's debut short story collection. . . . This collection marks the emergence of a bona fide literary treasure.” - Minneapolis Star Tribune
Amber J. Phillips, known as Amber Abundance, is a writer, performer, and creative director. Amber is devoted to using radical Black queer imagination to create stories and art that builds active and insightful audiences.
In 2021, Amber released her first short film, Abundance, about the limitations and radical possibilities of identity. Abundance was a 2021 BlackStar Film Festival selection and won the audience award for Best Short Narrative. Published in leading outlets including DAZED, Gagosian Quarterly, and LA Times IMAGE Magazine, Amber’s writing and narrative strategies merge independent creative entrepreneurship with editorial expertise to deliver visionary storytelling and cultural strategy for brands and organizations in an ever-changing market.
Currently, Amber is building the creative studio Ample World using her rare blend of writing, performance, cultural analysis, and editorial instinct to shape narratives that position artists, brands, and leaders for their next era.
With a sharp focus on humor and creative non-fiction prose, Amber writes a monthly newsletter called Toxic Femininity on Substack about her lore as Black Femme Lesbian.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS - The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
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SUPPLEMENTAL RESOURCES - The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
These additional resources will help integrate learning from our Study Hall books with additional interviews, articles, and podcasts. They may be referenced during WITS Study Hall meetings, so check them out.
Percival Everett lives in Los Angeles, where he is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California
He has been nominated for the Booker Prize twice – he was shortlisted for The Trees in 2022 and shortlisted for James in 2024 – and is the author of over 30 published works. A Guggenheim Fellow and Pulitzer Prize Finalist, Everett has won the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, the Academy Award in Literature, the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction, and the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for Fiction.
His 2001 novel Erasure was adapted into the Oscar-nominated major motion picture, American Fiction. He received the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award at the National Book Critics Circle Awards in 2021. Most recently, he was honored by the Chicago Public Library Foundation with the 2025 Carl Sandburg Literary Award.
James
by Percival EverettJoin us on December 4 at 5 p.m. CT to discuss James by Percival Everett, facilitated by award-winning journalist Natalie Y. Moore.
“Using nuance and vulnerability to emphasize Jim’s humanity, [Everett leaves a] stamp on the literary landscape as he dismantles the stereotypes of the enslaved humans depicted in Twain’s classic. . . Percival Everett has accomplished more than humanizing a marginalized voice. He has, once again, delivered a seminal work of literary reparation.”
—Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Percival Everett [is] our current Great American Novelist. . . [JAMES] is a masterpiece that will help redefine one of the classics of American literature, while also being a major achievement on its own. . . I almost cannot imagine a future where teachers assign The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn without also assigning James alongside it. . . Everett is one of the most, if not the most interesting writers working today.”
—The Chicago Tribune
James Facilitator: Natalie Y. Moore
Natalie Y. Moore is an award-winning Chicago journalist whose reporting tackles race, housing, economic development, food injustice, and violence. She is a Senior Lecturer at Northwestern University.
Natalie’s acclaimed book The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation received the 2016 Chicago Review of Books award for nonfiction and was Buzzfeed’s best nonfiction book of 2016. She is also co-author of The Almighty Black P Stone Nation: The Rise, Fall and Resurgence of an American Gang and Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation.
Natalie is a 2021 USA Fellow. The Pulitzer Center named her a 2020 Richard C. Longworth Media Fellow for international reporting. In 2021, University of Chicago Center for Effective Government (CEG), based at the the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, welcomed her in its first cohort of Senior Practitioner Fellows.
In spring 2023, she was playwright-in-residence at Chicago State University in conjunction with Chicago Dramatists (CD). CD named her a playwright-in-residence in 2023 and bestowed her with the inaugural Lydia Diamond award.
Natalie’s work has helped shift the way Chicagoans today think about segregation in the region.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS - jAMES
One
How does James' use of code-switching, particularly the 'slave filter,' when interacting with white characters reflect broader themes in the novel and Black history in America?
