Natashia Deón is a two-time NAACP Image Award Nominee, practicing criminal attorney and author of critically acclaimed debut novel, Grace. It was named a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times and awarded Best Debut Novel by the American Library Association's Black Caucus. A PEN America fellow, Deón has also been awarded fellowships and residencies at Yale, Prague's Creative Program, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and others. She is now a professor of creative writing at UCLA and Antioch University.