m shelly conner

Audra Russell chats with author M Shelly Conner.

Chicago native M Shelly Conner spent her summers bouncing between her grandmother in Memphis and relatives in Los Angeles, reveling in the sprawl of the Great Migration. She received her PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago. A multigenre writer, she is the creator of the Quare Life web series and has published essays on dapper queer aesthetics, Black womanhood, self-sustainable living, and their intersections in various publications, including the A.V. Club, theGrio, Playboy magazine, and Crisis magazine. An excerpt of her debut novel, everyman, appears in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. Conner is assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Central Arkansas and lives in Arkansas with her wife and their dog, Whiskey. Learn more at http://mshellyconner.com.

We take a deep dive into her beautifully layered debut novel, everyman, and have an enlightening conversation about family lineage, love, and personal growth.  

So sit back, relax, and enjoy! 

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On this episode of Black & Published, Nikesha is speaking with M Shelly Conner about her debut novel, everyman. M Shelly is a Chicago native who spent her summers bouncing between her grandmother in Memphis and relatives in Los Angeles, reveling in the sprawl of the Great Migration. That sprawl informs the work in everyman which M Shelly began working on first in 2005 and seriously during her PhD program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. An excerpt of everyman appears in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. M Shelly is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Central Arkansas and lives in Arkansas with her wife and their dog Whiskey.

Episode Notes

On this episode of Black & Published, Nikesha is speaking with M Shelly Conner about her debut novel, everyman. M Shelly is a Chicago native who spent her summers bouncing between her grandmother in Memphis and relatives in Los Angeles, reveling in the sprawl of the Great Migration. That sprawl informs the work in everyman which M Shelly began working on first in 2005 and seriously during her PhD program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. An excerpt of everyman appears in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. M Shelly is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Central Arkansas and lives in Arkansas with her wife and their dog Whiskey.

Over the course of the conversation M Shelly discusses the novel that made her want to get better at writing, crafting an epic generational story, and unpacking the so-called "phases" of life our parents' and grandparents' generation had knowledge of but never talked about.



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