Aya de Leon | |
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| Born | 1967 (age 58–59) Los Angeles,California, U.S. |
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| Education | Harvard University (BA) Antioch University Los Angeles (MFA) |
| Parents | Taj Mahal Anna de Leon |
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| ayadeleon | |
Aya de Leon (born 1967) is an American novelist and activist who teaches at theUniversity of California Berkeley. She first came to national attention as aspoken-word artist in the underground poetry scene in theSan Francisco Bay Area, and ahip-hop theater artist. de Leon is ofPuerto Rican, African-American, and West Indian heritage, and much of her work explores issues of race, gender, socio-economic class, body, nation and the climate crisis.
De Leon was born in Los Angeles in 1967, she is the daughter ofTaj Mahal and his first wife, Anna de Leon.[1]
De Leon attendedHarvard University, where she received aBachelor of Arts. After, she returned to the Bay Area and began to perform spoken word, she won a spot on the San Francisco Slam Team (they won the Western Region Poetry Slam in 2000). From 1998 to 2008 she toured extensively as an independent artist. In 2001, she began to develop the hip-hop theater showThieves in the Temple: The Reclaiming of Hip Hop, focused on fighting sexism andconsumerism in hip hop[2][3] She began her college teaching career atStanford University in 2001. In 2006, she was chosen as the Director ofJune Jordan's Poetry for the People at UC Berkeley, where she currently teachespoetry andspoken word. She earned herMaster of Fine Arts in fiction fromAntioch University Los Angeles.
From 1995 to 2009, her work was published in various print journals and anthologies, includingEssence Magazine.
In 2009, she stopped touring to start a family and transition to being a novelist. In 2013 she began to blog and to write for various online outlets, such asHarper's Bazaar,xojane,Bitch Magazine,Ebony,Racialicious,Writers Digest,Fusion,Womans Day,Movement Strategy Center, andThe Feminist Wire. In 2014 she secured representation withliterary agent Jenni Ferrari Adler of Union Literary in NYC. In 2015, she sold her debut book, a feminist heist novel with a Latina Robin Hood protagonist in a two-book deal toKensington Books in New York. Her first novel,Uptown Thief, was published in 2016, the first of the "Justice Hustlers" series, which was optioned for TV. Aya was working on the pilot, but the production company did not survive the protracted writer's strike. In 2023, she was interviewed in the New York Times "By the Book." Aya is currently the Poet Laureate of Berkeley.[4]
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