Author Talk: Red Lip Theology | Candice Marie Benbow in conversation with Toni Wilson

“Candice Marie Benbow is a once-in-a-generation theologian, the kind who, having ground dogma into dust with the fine point of a stiletto, leads us into the wide-open spaces of faith.”—Brittney Cooper, author of Eloquent Rage and co-editor of The Crunk Feminist Collection Blurring the boundaries of righteous and irreverent, Red Lip Theology invites us to discover freedom in a progressive Christian faith that incorporates activism, feminism, and radical authenticity. Essayist and theologian Candice Marie Benbow’s essays explore universal themes like heartache, loss, forgiveness, and sexuality, and she unflinchingly empowers women who struggle with feeling loved and nurtured by church culture. Benbow writes powerfully about experiences at the heart of her Black womanhood. In honoring her single mother’s love and triumphs—and mourning her unexpected passing—she finds herself forced to shed restrictions she’d been taught to place on her faith practice. And by embracing alternative spirituality and womanist theology, and confronting staid attitudes on body positivity and LGBTQ+ rights, Benbow challenges religious institutions, faith leaders, and communities to reimagine how faith can be a tool of liberation and transformation for women and girls.

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Candice Marie Benbow is a theologian, essayist, columnist, baker, and educator whose work gives voice to Black women’s shared experiences of faith, healing, and wholeness. Named by Sojourners as one of “10 Christian Women Shaping the Church in 2020,” she has written for Essence, Glamour, The Root, VICE, Shondaland, Madame Noire, and the Me Too Movement. Candice created the “Lemonade Syllabus” social media campaign, founded the media boutique Zion Hill Media Group, and, in memory of her mother, established The LouiseMarie Foundation to support HBCU nursing students and community mental health projects. A member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Candice holds degrees from Tennessee State University, North Carolina Central University, and Duke Divinity School.

Toni Wilson (she/her/hers) is a social worker, community organizer, spiritualist, fat liberationist and self-identified Black/Hood Feminist who’s work centers Black women and girls whose body never quite felt like their own. She is a Black girl born and raised in Brooklyn with roots in Jamaica; dancing to Dancehall, Soca, and Afrobeats is her resistance. Toni grounds her healing work at the intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality, body, and culture because she strongly believes only through those lenses is true liberation possible.

Through youth work, community organizing, and advocacy, Toni uses her radical imagination to help herself and her community envision a world where everyone believes in the promise of all Black and Brown young people, specifically Black girls. Toni managed and facilitated The Young Women’s Advisory Council and supported young people as they engaged in Girls for Gender Equity’s (GGE) campaign work which grew her leadership and policy analysis. As GGE’s Director of Organizing, she leads and supports in building GGE’s national vision, centering the needs and lives of Black girls and Black gender expansive young people across the country, and driving national campaigns.

She is a Youth Counselor for the Ali Forney Center supporting NYC’s LGBTQIA youth experiencing houselessness and a New Leaders Council 2020 Fellow. In her creative time, she is ½ of the hosts of Stay In the Sun Podcast; a podcast hosted by two Caribbean American Black Women navigating politics, music, identity, and life as Black millennial social workers. As a fat liberationist and cultural critic, Toni shares her fat girl analysis as a freelance writer for The Curvy Fashionista. She revels in Caribbean Carnival, live concerts, collecting bamboo earrings, and red lipstick. Toni holds a Masters in Social Work from Hunter’s Silberman School of Social Work and a BA in Sociology & Gender Studies from Purchase College, State University of New York.

You can follow Toni and her ever evolving work through Instagram and Twitter at: @FatBlackLuxury and keep up with her writing in her linktree.