Submit

Semifinalist for the 2026 BookLife Prize Fiction Contest

Since she was eighteen, Dee Moreland Taylor has survived everything alone. She micromanages her small business, her virginity, and her relationships with anyone who might get too close — including her newlywed husband Eric, and especially God.

Now in her mid-40s in rural Kentucky, Dee's life is spiraling without her permission. She's drowning in debt, navigating menopause, and trying to hold herself up to scripture's standards as a late-in-life wife. She makes a calculated trade: she'll train Eric for an elite ultramarathon using the one thing she's always controlled — sex. But when injury sidelines their training, her sexual awakening comes to an abrupt halt. Soon Dee finds herself alone again, only this time she's faced with her own desire, and no guide for what comes next.

Submit is a literary novel about a Black woman's reckoning with faith, menopause, marriage, and the long shadow of purity culture. It wrestles with what it means to know oneself in the second half of life.

Published by Stage of Grace Press, an independent literary imprint.