Natashia Deón

Acclaimed Novelist

The Perishing
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Lecture Topics
  • Faith in Writing
  • Plotting a Novel
  • Backstory
  • The Business of Writing
  • Community Building through Writing
  • An Evening with Natashia Deon

Biography

“Justice is a concept that is always on Natashia Deón’s mind. As a lawyer, a law professor, a mother, and a novelist, it undergirds all she does.” —LA Times

“Natashia Deón’s 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?” —New York Times

​Natashia Deón is the author of the critically-acclaimed novel, Grace (Counterpoint Press, 2016)—which was awarded the 2017 First Novel Prize by the American Library Association’s Black Caucus (BCALA). The novel was named a Kirkus Review Best Book of 2016, a New York Times Top Book 2016, a Book Riot Favorite Book of 2016, The Root Best Book of 2016, and Entropy Magazine Best Book of 2016. Author Caroline Leavitt describes Grace as “exploring a teeming, post-Civil War world where the emancipation of slaves can be anything but freedom.”, and the Kirkus starred review praised it thus: “[T]his is a brave story, necessary and poignant; it is a story that demands to be heard. This is the violent, terrifying world of the antebellum South, where African-American women were prey and their babies sold like livestock. This is the story of mothers and daughters—of violence, absence, love, and legacies.” In the novel, Naomi, the narrator — the specter of a dead slave — watches over her child as she grows amid the turmoil surrounding the Civil War. At one point, Naomi’s ghostly presence is felt in the land of the living, where a character says to the wraith, “There’s no justice. Only grace.” (LA Times).

Deón is also the author of The Perishing (Counterpoint Press, 2021), which was nominated for a 2021 NAACP Image Award. The novel follows a Black immortal woman in 1930s Los Angeles trying to save the world. Set against the rich historical landscape of Depression-era Los Angeles, The Perishing charts a course through a changing city confronting racism, poverty, and the drumbeat of a coming war for one miraculous woman whose fate is inextricably linked to the city she comes to call home.

A UCLA creative writing professor, mother of two, Deón is creator of two popular L.A.-based reading series: Dirty Laundry Lit, a non-profit that focuses on introducing people to literature, and The Table. In 2017, she was a US Delegate to Armenia as part of the U.S. Embassy’s reconciliation project between Turkey and Armenia, in partnership with the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program.

A practicing attorney and law professor, Deón speaks to and for an abolition of the prison industrial complex—what she terms warehouses of people—through the reduction of prisons and penalties for crime. She is for rehabilitation — “real rehabilitation” — especially for those serving life sentences or have been sentenced to death. Her primary focus is drug offense sentencing reduction and rights restoration. Deón says, “My work is not primarily legislative or policy driven. My function as a lawyer is boots on the ground.” She birthed a 501c3 non-profit called REDEEMED the focus of which is to create a hub of services and relief for those who have been incarcerated or have been convicted of crimes.

In 2018, Deón created the Drunk Girls Bible Study podcast, promoted as “A real talk Christian podcast about the Word. (And we’ll try not to say bad words).”

Deón is the recipient of a PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellowship, and has been awarded fellowships and residencies at Yale, Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Prague’s Creative Writing Program, Dickinson House in Belgium, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Riverside-Palm Desert. Her writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, Buzzfeed, LA Review of Books, The Rumpus, The Feminist Wire, Asian American Lit Review, Rattling Wall and other places.

Short Bio

Natashia Deón is a 2017 NAACP Image Award Nominee and author of the critically-acclaimed novel, Grace, which was named a best book of 2016 by The New York Times, The Root, Kirkus Review, Book Riot, and Entropy Magazine, and has been featured in People Magazine, TIME Magazine, and Red Book. Grace won the 2017 American Library Association, Black Caucus Award for Best Debut Fiction. She is also the author of the novel The Perishing, which was nominated for a 2021 NAACP Image Award. A practicing attorney, mother, and law professor, Deón is the recipient of a PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellowship and served as a 2017 U.S. Delegate to Armenia in partnership with the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program, for a reconciliation project involving Armenian and Turkish writers.

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