DEESHA PHILYAW’s debut short story collection, Las vidas secretas de las damas de la iglesia, won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Story Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and was a finalist for a National Book Award. Her latest book is The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman: A Novel (Mariner Books). 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.