A New Collection of Short Fiction from Penny Mickelbury
God’s Will and Other Lies
CLAYTON, North Carolina, September 4, 2017—BLF Press is pleased to announce the acquisition of a collection of short fiction by esteemed journalist, mystery writer, and playwright, Penny Mickelbury. God’s Will and Other Lies is tentatively scheduled for release in early 2019.
Mickelbury was a pioneering newspaper, radio and television journalist based primarily in Washington, D.C. She taught journalism at the Los Angeles Leadership Academy, a charter middle school, and was a Coordinator with the Los Angeles Public Library’s Adult Literacy Program. Mickelbury was a resident writer at Hedgebrook Women Writers Retreat, and is a recipient of the Audre Lorde Estate Grant. She was a co-founder of Alchemy: Theatre of Change, a young people's’ acting company in New York City. She lives in Los Angeles with her partner of 18 years.
Her new collection, God’s Will and Other Lies, (will join her catalog of ten published mystery novels in three successful series: The Carol Ann Gibson Mysteries (winner of a Gold Pen Award by the Black Writers Alliance,) The Mimi Patterson/Gianna Maglione Mysteries (two-time Lambda Literary Award finalists), and the Phil Rodriquez Mysteries.
Also an accomplished playwright, Mickelbury’s play The Black Family Robinson was one of three plays that inaugurated the Inglewood/Willie Agee Playhouse (Los Angeles) Staged Reading Series in 2016 and last year she was the recipient of an Ethel Woolson Lab, a competitive honor, for her play Hush Now, which received a staged reading at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre Black Box. Hush Now also received a staged reading as part of the Fountain Theatre’s (Los Angeles) New Works festival. Her play Waiting for Gabriel was the second place winner in the Theodore Ward Competition and was part of the TriBeCa Film Studio’s (New York) Staged Reading Series.
“We are honored to have Penny join us at BLF Press,” said publisher Stephanie Andrea Allen. “She is one of our Black lesbian literary foremothers, and a collection of stories focused on the multiplicity of Black women’s lives, lesbian or not, is just what we need right now.”
When asked why she was starting this project, Mickelbury stated “We wonderful Women of Color! If punctured--yes, we all bleed red. But we are not all the same. We live different lives and we tell different stories and we tell them differently. We know this, and so does Prof. Stephanie Andrea Allen. BLF Press gives space and volume to our voices. This book has been a long time coming and it is way overdue. Thank you, BLF Press, for your vision and your courage.”