Penny Mickelbury is a pioneering newspaper, radio and television journalist, based primarily in Washington, DC, who also is a teacher of both children (at a Los Angeles Charter Middle School) and adults (in the Los Angeles Public Library’s Adult Literacy Program.) She is an award-winning writer of stage plays and a co-founder of Alchemy: theatre of Change, a young people’s acting company. She is the recipient of the Audre Lorde Estate Grant and she was a resident writer at the Hedgebrook Women Writers Retreat.
This new collection of stories, God’s Will and Other Lies, joins her catalog of eleven published mystery novels in three successful series: The Mimi Patterson/Gianna Maglione Mysteries (two-time Lambda Literary Award finalists); the Carole Ann Gibson Mysteries (winner of a Gold Pen Award by the Black Writers Alliance); and the Phil Rodriquez Mysteries; and the novel of historical fiction, Belle City.
Penny Mickelbury
“In this stunning departure from her mystery writing, Penny Mickelbury’s collection of stories God’s Will and Other Lies, attends to the lives of Black women, mostly aging and elderly, but all determined to face life with strength and grace.
A nearly blind woman is determined to venture out into the world alone, and must face the consequences of her travels. A woman estranged from her community ponders the meaning of hearsay and its devastating consequences. A middle-aged woman leaves the danger of the city only to find it lurking in her own backyard. And in the novella, “Into the Fire,” Mickelbury follows the life of a southern family as they strive for success amidst the violence and uncertainty of 1960s Detroit.
In beautiful and exacting prose, Mickelbury gives voice to an often-overlooked coterie of women in this superb collection of fiction.”
