Faye moderated the grassroots panel for theĪrkansas Civil Rights Symposium during the Freedom Riders 50th Anniversary and is coordinating the first AWP African Diaspora Caucus. She is co-founder and a fellow at Kimbilio Center for Fiction, and her work has appeared in the anthology Arsnick: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Arkansas. Her novel, Mourner’s Bench, is the winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in debut fiction and The Philosophical Society of TexasĪward of Merit for fiction. Sanderia Faye serves on the faculty at Southern Methodist University, is an instructor at the 2017 Desert Nights Rising Stars Conference at Arizona State University, and a professional speaker and activist. It was important for Faye as a native of the region where the novel is based, to accurately portray Arkansas Delta women who challenged societies’ norms to improve life for future generations. The novel explains the conflict between rural southern church members and African American women who took leadership positions in the movement. Mourner’s Bench portrays real-life historical Arkansas individuals whose participation was vital to the march to freedom.

With characters as vibrant and evocative as their setting, Mourner’s Bench is the story of a young girl coming to terms with religion, racism, and feminism while also navigating the terrain of early adolescence and trying to settle into her place in her family and community. Most folks just wanted to keep the peace, and Reverend Jefferson called the SNCC organizers “the evil among us.” But her mother, along with local civil rights activist Carrie Dilworth, the SNCC organizers, Daisy Bates, attorney John Walker, and indeed most of the country, seemed determined to push Maeby toward integration. When organizers from the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) came to town just as the revival was beginning, Sarah couldn’t help but be caught up in the turmoil. Both smarter and more serious than her years (a “fifty-year-old mind in an eight-year-old body,” according to Esther), Sarah was torn between the traditions, religion, and work ethic of her community and the progressive civil rights and feminist politics of her mother, who had recently returned from art school in Chicago. But first, Sarah would need to navigate the growing tensions of small-town Arkansas in the 1960s. That would mean sitting on the mourner’s bench come revival, waiting for her sign, and then testifying in front of the whole church. Sarah Jones was only eight years old in the summer of 1964, but with her mother Esther Mae on eight prayer lists and flipping around town with the generally mistrusted civil rights organizers, Sarah believed it was time to get baptized and take responsibility for her own sins.

At the First Baptist Church of Maeby, Arkansas, the sins of the child belonged to the parents until the child turned thirteen.

Arsnick by Jennifer Jensen Wallach