Deesha Philyaw returns to church ladies with The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman

When I write my memoir, it will absolutely be because of Deesha Philyaw. I reached out to her asking for advice on publishing one, and she took it seriously. She shared what that process could look like and how I should work toward it, down to keeping a journal and finding an agent. It was much more than vague encouragement. She generously shared the practical knowledge that turned something I had only been considering into something that now feels possible. Philyaw has built a career writing Black women with room for contradiction, humor, desire, failure, and change, and she has also made a point of sharing what she knows with other writers. On Tue., Sept. 29, HarperCollins will release Philyaw’s latest work, The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman , a novel she started writing in 2006. In 2020, when Pittsburgh City Paper spoke with Philyaw after the release of her acclaimed short story collection The Secret Lives of Church Ladies , she felt compelled to “finally finish” The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman . Six years later, she has. “I am thrilled, relieved, and proud,” Philyaw tells City Paper . “For so long, I was only able to give this novel my leftover time and energy.” “ True Confessions ’ pronouns are she/her/that girl,” she adds. “She’s having her moment.” Philyaw began writing Scharisse Freeman around 2006. For the first eight or nine years, Scharisse functioned as a proxy for the author. Initially, the character was newly divorced and co-parenting, just as Philyaw was then. An early reader suggested that Philyaw put Scharisse back into her unhappy marriage to a pastor. But Scharisse still moved through the world too much like her creator. The novel stalled. “She was very passive and snarky,” Philyaw says. “Though I could relate to how she felt, I didn’t like her very much as a character, and I didn’t enjoy writing her.” A breakthrough came when Philyaw stopped making Scharisse behav