Raven Leilani

Raven Leilani Baptiste is an American writer who publishes under the name Raven Leilani. Her debut novel Luster was released in 2020 to critical acclaim. Leilani grew up in a family of artists in the Bronx before they moved to a suburb of Albany, New York. She grew up as a Seventh-day Adventist and later left the church. Having attended an art high school, Leilani expected to become a visual artist. She graduated from Marist College, located in Poughkeepsie, NY, in 2012, where she studied English and psychology.

Her first job was as an imaging specialist at Ancestry.com, having previously worked in the archives of Marist College as an undergraduate. Later, she worked at a scientific journal for the U.S. Department of Defense and as a delivery person for Postmates in Washington, D.C. She also worked as an archivist at Macmillan. In 2017, she began pursuing her MFA at New York University, where she studied under Zadie Smith and with writers Katie Kitamura and Jonathan Safran Foer. She now lives in Brooklyn.

Leilani's debut novel Luster received significant attention at its publishing. The book's publisher, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, named the book it's novel of August 2020 as part of their "Dare to Imagine" campaign. It is also part of Marie Claire's book club and has been lauded by outlets including Elle, the HuffPost, BuzzFeed News, and the New York Times.

Luster has been praised by Carmen Maria Machado, Brit Bennett, Angela Flournoy, and Zadie Smith. As a result, Kirkus Reviews awarded Luster the 2020 Kirkus Prize for Fiction. In addition, Luster was also awarded the 2020 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the 2020 John Leonard Prize at the National Book Critics Circle Awards, the 2021 Dylan Thomas Prize, and the 2021 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award.

Leilani's writing is influenced by her background as a visual artist, life experiences, poetry, and love of comic books and music. She has written for publications including Esquire, The Cut, and Vogue.