Natashia Deón

Natashia Deón is a two-time NAACP Image Award Nominee, practicing criminal attorney, and college professor at UCLA, Antioch University and Yale summer program. Author of the critically acclaimed novels, THE PERISHING and GRACE, which was named a Best Debut Fiction by The American Library Associations, Black Caucus and was named Best Book by the New York Times, Deón is a Los Angeles native, wife, mother of two.

Deón was a 2017 U.S. Delegate to Armenia as part of the U.S. Embassy’s reconciliation project between Turkey and Armenia in partnership with the University of Iowa and is a Pamela Krasney Moral Courage Fellow. In that role, she founded REDEEMED, a criminal record clearing and clemency project that pairs writers with those who have been convicted of crimes. 

A PEN America Fellow, Deón has also been awarded fellowships and residencies at  Prague’s Creative Writing Program in the Czech Republic, Dickinson House in Belgium and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She has been featured in TIME Magazine, People Magazine, The Root, Red Book, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, American Short Fiction, Buzzfeed and other places.