Natashia Deón is a two-time NAACP Image Award nominee for Outstanding Literature, a Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award nominee, and the author of the critically acclaimed novels Grace and The Perishing. A practicing criminal attorney, professor of creative writing at UCLA and Antioch University, and former PEN America and Bread Loaf Fellow, Deón has also served as a judge for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Fiction. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, the Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. A sandwich generation caregiver for her mother and mother of two children, including a son with special needs, Deón brings a deeply lived sense of justice, history, and tenderness to her work. Her highly anticipated World War II novel, Birds of War, is forthcoming in February 2027.