ABOUT AYA

(click here for 175-word bio)

Aya de León teaches creative writing in the African American Studies Department at UC Berkeley. She is acquiring editor for a new climate justice fiction imprint Fighting Chance Books, which will publish stories of people taking collective action in the here and now to solve the climate crisis. Kensington Books publishes her award-winning “Justice Hustlers” feminist heist series, which includes SIDE CHICK NATION—the first novel published about Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico—which won first place in the International Latino Book Awards. Kensington has also published her standalone novels. A SPY IN THE STRUGGLE (2020) is about FBI infiltration of an African American organization fighting for climate justice and Black Lives. QUEEN OF URBAN PROPHECY (2021), is about a female rap artist that addresses misogyny in hip hop, police violence, and climate justice. THAT DANGEROUS ENERGY (2022) is about a fashion designer who finds herself in a love triangle between a fossil fuel mogul and a climate activist and begins spying for the movement. Candlewick Books publishes Aya’s books for younger readers. Her “Factory” series began with UNDERCOVER LATINA–which won the Jane Addams Peace Award and was a Junior Library Guild selection–about a teen spy who goes up against a white nationalist terrorist (2022). And continues with the prequel, UNTRACEABLE about a plus-size Black teen at a white LA prep school who goes on the run with her mom and experiences cultural whiplash at an urban Black school–plus learns that her parents are spies (October 2023). Aya’s teen thriller THE MYSTERY WOMAN IN ROOM THREE is currently available for free in serialized format on Orion Magazine. Aya’s work has also appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, Ebony, Guernica, Bitch Magazine, VICE, The Root, Ploughshares, and on Def Poetry. In 2022, she organized an online conference entitled Black Literature vs. the Climate Emergency (available on YouTube). She works on the issue of climate with the Movement for Black Lives. She currently has two novels-in-progress, THE LAST CONCERT ON EARTH, about climate justice and reproductive justice, as well as the third book in the “Factory” series, tentatively titled UNDISCLOSED. She is also working on an intersectional memoir-in-progress about race, gender, war, body image, and the environment.