Torch x Texas Book Festival featuring Deesha Philyaw and LaToya Watkins

About this event

Join us for a conversation featuring Deesha Philyaw, author of The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman , and LaToya Watkins, author of The Book of Chuck ! A book signing will follow.

Click Here to RSVP

This event is free and open to the public.

Family legacies are rarely simple, as LaToya Watkins and Deesha Philyaw prove in their latest novels. The Book of Chuck follows a Texas family across generations as they reckon with an inherited ability to foresee death, a curse that forces long buried secrets to the surface. In The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman , Scharisse Freeman's life as a megachurch first lady takes an unexpected turn when a malicious scandal threatens to destroy the carefully curated life she’s built. Join the authors – in conversation with Torch founder Amanda Johnston — for a discussion about belonging, complex family bonds and faith in the unknown.

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.

LaToya Watkins is an award-winning author of two books. Her short story collection, Holler, Child , was longlisted for the National Book Award and the winner of Reading the West Book Award in Fiction and the Writer’s League of Texas Book Award in Fiction. Her debut novel, Perish , was published to great acclaim in 2022. LaToya’s writing has appeared in A Public Space , The Sun , McSweeney’s , and the Kenyon Review , among other publications.

Torch Literary Arts is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Torch has featured work by Colleen J. McElroy, Tayari Jones, Sharon Bridgforth, Crystal Wilkinson, Patricia Smith, Natasha Trethewey, Elizabeth Alexander, and others. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats.

This event was made possible with support from the City of Austin, the Burdine Johnson Foundation, the Austin Community Foundation, and the Texas Book Festival.