Kimbilio Author Showcase

Join us for a night of unforgettable storytelling and celebration as Kimbilio for Black Fiction fellows and faculty take the stage.

Listen to five extraordinary voices in the contemporary African American diaspora: Danielle Evans, Rickey Fayne, Rion Amiclar Scott, Deesha Philyaw and Jacinda Townsend.

Experience stories that bend time, break rules, and challenge expectations.

About the Authors:
Danielle Evans is the author of the story collections The Office of Historical Corrections and Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. Evans’ first collection won the PEN America Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Hurston-Wright Award for fiction, and the Paterson Prize for fiction. Her second won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and was a finalist for the Aspen Prize, The Story Prize, The Chautauqua Prize, and The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction. She has been awarded the New Literary Project Joyce Carol Oates Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and was selected as one of the National Book Foundation's annual 5 under 35. Evans’ stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies including Best American Short Stories. She is an Associate Professor in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, where she is also affiliated faculty with the Center for Africana Studies.

Rickey Fayne is a fiction writer from rural West Tennessee whose work has appeared in the American Short Fiction, Guernica, The Sewanee Review, and The Kenyon Review, among other magazines. His writing embodies his Black, Southern, over-churched upbringing in order to reimagine and honor his ancestors' experiences. He has received support for his writing from Tin House, Community of Writers, Kimbillio, Sewanee, Bread Loaf, Yaddo, Willapa Bay, and MacDowell. His first novel, The Devil Three Times is currently shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.

Rion Amilcar Scott is the author of the story collections The World Doesn’t Require You and Insurrections, which was awarded the 2017 PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the 2017 Hillsdale Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He teaches creative writing at the University of Maryland, College Park. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Kenyon Review, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020 and McSweeney's Quarterly, among other publications.

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. Deesha’s debut novel, The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman, is forthcoming from Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, in 2026.

Jacinda Townsend is the author of Trigger Warning and Mother Country, winner of the 2023 Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. Townsend's first novel, Saint Monkey, winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for historical fiction, was an Honor Book of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. A former broadcast journalist, antitrust lawyer, and elected official, Townsend teaches in the MFA program at Brown University.

About the Moderator:

David Haynes is professor emeritus of English at Southern Methodist University, where he directed the creative writing program for ten years. For the past twenty-three years he has also been on the faculty of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He is the author of seven novels for adults and five books for younger readers. His most recent book is Martha’s Daughter: A Novella and Stories. He does and has done a bunch of other stuff, too.

About the Program:

• Doors will open to registered attendees at 6 pm.
• A local bookseller will be on-site and have books available for purchase.
• Free parking vouchers are available to program attendees who park at the Franklin Street Garage (15 W. Franklin Street) after 4pm. Ask Pratt event staff for your parking voucher prior to or after the program.
• There is no registration required for virtual attendance, simply visit the Enoch Pratt Free Library's Facebook or Youtube page.