The Desert Nights, Rising Stars
Writers Conference

Home / Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference / Schedule / 2019 / Conference Schedule Saturday, February 23, 2019 / Backstory with Natashia Deón

Conference Schedule 2019

Conference Schedule 2019

Saturday, February 23, 2019, 4:15 p.m. - 5:15 p.m.

Backstory: Moving Forward, Looking Back with Natashia Deón

Date(s): Saturday, February 23, 2019, 4:15 p.m. - 5:15 p.m.
Location: Heritage, University Club (view map)
Type(s): Presentation, Workshop
Genre and Form(s): Fiction, Mixed Genre
Tags: Narrative, Story, Backstory, Exposition, Scenes, Stereotypes, Details

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Meet our Faculty

About the Session

Backstories help to create the world of your story. It tells us what’s driving your protagonist (and antagonist) to take the action, to attain a goal, and what your protagonist feels about passionately. Layering the characterization with these histories show us who they are today and will help you avoid writing stereotypes. The aim of this workshop is to address backstory and to get your creative juices flowing in writing scenes (the past affecting the present) and relevant history details. These details, when woven successfully into pertinent places of your story, will give it added meaning.

Meet the Presenter(s)

Desert Nights Rising Stars Writers Conference Faculty 2019 Natashia Deón


Natashia Deón

Natashia Deón is an NAACP Image Award Nominee and author of the critically-acclaimed novel, GRACE (Counterpoint Press), which was named a best book of 2016 by The New York Times, The Root, Kirkus Review, Book Riot, and Entropy Magazine, and has been featured in People Magazine, TIME Magazine and Red Book. GRACE won the 2017 American Library Association, Black Caucus Award for Best Debut Fiction. Deón is the 2018-2019 L.A. Times Book Award Prize judge for fiction and debut fiction and is creative writing professor for UCLA and has been a law professor for Trinity Law School. A practicing attorney, mother, and wife to an extraordinary man, Deón served as a 2017 U.S. Delegate to Armenia in partnership with the University of Iowa. She is the founder and co-host of Drunk Girls Bible Study podcast.


Learn more about Natashia Deón