Even before she landed a seven-figure deal with a major New York publisher a few weeks ago, former Pittsburgh author Deesha Philyaw had one of the most irrepressible smiles in the business. Philyaw’s highly anticipated 2025 debut novel, “The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman,” and “Girl, Look,” a collection of short stories, have been […]

Tony Norman
Award-winning writer Tony Norman tells the untold stories of Pittsburgh’s Black communities in a weekly column for NEXT. The longtime columnist and editorial writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was a Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan and an adjunct journalism professor at Chatham University. He is the current chair of the International Free Expression Project.