Natashia Deón

Natashia Deón is an NAACP Image Award Nominee, practicing criminal attorney and Creative Writing Professor for UCLA and Antioch University. She is the author of the critically acclaimed novel, GRACE, which was named a Best Book by the New York Times and awarded Best Debut Novel by the American Library Association's Black Caucus in 2016. Deón’s new novel, The Perishing, is due in stores Nov. 2, 2021. A PEN America Fellow, Deón has also been awarded fellowships and residencies at Yale, Prague's Creative Writing Program, Dickinson House in Belgium and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She has been featured in TIME Magazine, People Magazine, Red Book, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, American Short Fiction, Buzzfeed and other places.

Natashia can be found at natashiadeon.com

Charitable Organization: Redeemed

Praise

"With her debut novel, Grace, Natashia Deón has announced herself beautifully and distinctively. Her emotional range spans several octaves. She writes with her nerves, generating terrific suspense. And her style is so visual it plays tricks on the imagination — did I just watch that scene? Or did I read it? Ms. Deón is not merely another new author to watch. She has delivered something whole, and to be reckoned with, right now… It's Ms. Deón's real and rare ability to make reading a felt, almost physical experience — of terror, rage, identification, sorrow. Ms. Deón is a graphic and unsparing storyteller… In Grace, Ms. Deón explores, with psychological acuity and absolutely no mercy, what the institution did to slave women — specifically, how it deprived them of the most basic chance to love, delight in and protect their own children.”—Jennifer Senior, New York Times

“Gripping and deeply affecting, Grace is an examination of injustice, violence, love, legacies, and survival.”—Buzzfeed

“[An] immersive tale… You'll believe every word.”—People

“[A] haunting portrait of slavery, love and violence.”—Newsday