“The Perishing is a downright masterpiece.” 
                 – Shondaland.com
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Natashia Deón is a two-time NAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Literature, practicing criminal attorney and author of the critically acclaimed novels, GRACE andThe Perishing. GRACE 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 Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award Nominee for Outstanding Fiction and a PEN America Fellow, Deón has also been awarded fellowships and residencies at Yale, Prague’s Creative Writing Program, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She is a professor of creative writing at UCLA and Antioch University. Her personal essays have been featured in The New York Times,Harper’sThe Los Angeles Times, Harper’s Bazaar, American Short Fiction, Buzzfeed and other places.

“Natashia Deón 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? It’s Ms. Deón’s real and rare ability to make reading a felt, almost physical experience.”Jennifer SeniorNew York Times

“This isn’t a book. It’s a touchstone. It’s an oracle. It’s a mirror in which you will see your authentic self, reflected on the pages. The Perishing is one part lyrical mystery, one part history lesson you didn’t learn in school, one part time machine. It’s a lush, genre-smashing, philosophical experience of a novel that blew my mind even as it broke my heart.” —Jamie Ford, New York Times bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Available in bookstores everywhere

Artist’s Statement

All history is inevitably a trial; a trial in our conversations, our minds, in the way we see ourselves and each other. For me, they are my novels. I am a literary artist who is also a practicing criminal attorney in Los Angeles, and like millions of “caregivers of adults” worldwide, I became a caregiver overnight.

I used to be ashamed to admit I was an artist when I was in a room of my legal peers. And in the rooms of artists, I was ashamed to be a lawyer. I am not anymore.

Law and caring for others, color the way I see the world, my morality, my reasoning, empathy, and my novels. Through fictionalized historical facts, multidimensional characters, faith, and experience, my novels aim to resurrect the past and build a deeper understanding of American history and its connection to our present malady.

My creative work often draws from the psyche of my legal work—crimes, justifiable excuse, and its inequitable application—as well as social constructs, consequences, and Black history. In the spirit of great Black women novelists such as Toni Morrison and Octavia Butler, my work is a doorway, hoping to engage empathy through understanding and in this way, inspire our nation to move closer to a safer union for all.

CONTACTS

SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS & FIRESIDES

Anya Backlund

Blue Flower Arts

A Literary Speaking Agency

845 677 8559 Office

619 944 9247 Cell

anya@blueflowerarts.com 

BlueFlowerArts.com

 

FILM & TV CO-AGENTS

CAA/ICM  

Los Angeles, CA 90067

 

SOMETHING ELSE?

natashia@natashiadeon.com

“God, The Perishing. Where do I even begin? It’s riveting, my God.”

—Crime Reads

“This marriage of period lit and science fiction will plug the Lovecraft Country sized hole in your heart.”

-Keyaira Boone, ESSENCE

Booklist Review Of The Day image
Indie Bound pics The Perishing by Natashia Deon as November 2021 Indie Next Pick
 
“Reading The Perishing feels like falling through a shimmering kaleidoscope of stories that, when pieced together, tell the past, present, and future of an immortal soul. It makes me excited for the future of literature.”
—Caroline Barbee, Friendly City Books, Columbus, MS
 
Thank you @friendlycitybooks 🙏🏾
Natashia Deon Headshot

“Set against the backdrop of Depression-era Los Angeles, this novel evokes the storytelling prowess of Octavia Butler. A young Black woman named Lou wakes up in an alley with no memory of where she came from or how she got there. Lou tries to make the best of her unsettling circumstances and pursues an education. When she meets a firefighter at a downtown boxing gym, she’s shocked to realize that she’s known his face since the days of living with her foster family. Could Lou be immortal? And if so, why?” –VW, LitHub

THE PERISHING NAMED A "MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK" by...

INDIE NEXT                   USA TODAY

THE NEW YORK TIMES

ESSENCE          SHONDALAND

PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY         BOOK RIOT

LIBRARY JOURNAL         LITHUB

CRIME READS          THE MILLIONS

“A bold and bracing novel steeped in LA history about love and power and justice.”

Bringing to mind Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed and Tochi Onyebuchi’s Riot Baby, Deon’s novel will dazzle and devastate readers. It is truly a novel that defies genre, carrying elements of historical fiction, scifi, and lit fic. I will be yelling about this book as I thrust it into readers hands for a long time to come.” —Faith Park-Dodge, Page 158 Books (Wake Forest, NC)

“What do these ghosts want—and why is literary fiction suddenly so full of them? (See: Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders; White Tears, by Hari Kunzru; Grace, by Natashia Deón; The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead.) It’s the past that won’t stay past, to paraphrase Faulkner. The ghosts—most of them, at any rate—want to rest, but they need restitution first.” 

The New York Times

New York Times Article by Natashia Deon for Mother's Day 2021 titled Mom's on Their Secret Strength Screenshot please click on picture for link

“Before then, I believed the truth was a gift and even compassionate lies could never know it. Unbirthday parties became my way to settle an incongruity and to do what I love — celebrate, despite the weight of everything. It is my Black joy. I won’t surrender.”

– Natashia Deón

KIRKUS
“A haunting, visceral novel that heralds the birth of a powerful new voice in American fiction.” —Kirkus, Starred Review
REDBOOK
“A multigenerational story about strong women in one of the darkest eras of American history.” —Redbook
“People will compare this book to Twelve Years a Slave, Cold Mountain, and Beloved. Deon sustains a murder ballad's intensity and gets into your bones like a song.” —Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things to Me
Bookriot
“A sweeping, intergenerational saga featuring a group of outcast women during one of the most compelling eras in American history.” —Bookriot
Spectrum Culture
“A chilling, uniquely visual reminder of how wrong we've been, how wrong we continue to be, of the strength of those who fight against constant oppression.” —Spectrum Culture
Elite Daily
“A captivating novel that reminds us of the power of motherhood and the idea of freedom.” -Elite Daily
“This is one novel that already feels like a classic.” —Caroline Leavitt, New York Times Bestselling author of Is This Tomorrowand Pictures of You
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NEWSDAY
“An immersive tale. You'll believe every word.”—People “A haunting portrait of slavery, love and violence.”—Newsday
THE GLOBE AND MAIL
“An unsettling, literally haunted, debut.” —The Globe and Mail
BOOKLIST
Readers will ache for these strong characters and yearn for them to find freedom and peace.” —Booklist, Starred Review
The Root
“A profound work of heart and grace.” —The Root
Coast Magazine
“A story of Black mothers and daughters surviving unspeakable violence during the darkest period of our nation's history history.” —Coast Magazine
Brooklyn Rail
“If the expression “natural–born storyteller” hasn't yet gone to the glue factory, then this novel takes the nag out for a fresh canter.” —Brooklyn Rail
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BUZZFEED
“Gripping and deeply affecting, Grace is an examination of injustice, violence, love, legacies, and survival.” —Buzzfeed
Ploughshares
“A novel of subtle daggers… Grace is a spellbinding debut.”—Ploughshares
CLYDE FITCH REPORT
“Stowe, Morrison and others have proven that the slave novel is the great American novel, and it's an exorcism of sorts. Add Natashia Deón's revelatory Grace to this list.” —Clyde Fitch Report
Clyde Fitch Report
“Stowe, Morrison and others have proven that the slave novel is the great American novel, and it's an exorcism of sorts. Add Natashia Deón's revelatory Grace to this list.” —Clyde Fitch Report
Lithub
“Deon captures the eerily familiar violence of the slavery era, and the ways in which the promises of the Emancipation Proclamation turn hollow.” —Lithub
Publishers Weekly
“Deón builds portraits of each tragic individual as the sprawling story moves to its redemptive end.” —Publishers Weekly, Boxed and Starred Review
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