New People (Senna) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—1970
• Raised—Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Stanford University; M.F.A., University of California-Irvine
• Awards—Whiting Writers' Award; Dos Passos Prize
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California


Danzy Senna is an American novelist, born to two writers: her father, Carl Senna, is an Afro-Mexican poet and author, and her mother, Fanny Howe, an Irish-American writer. The family settled in Boston, Massachusetts, but the couple eventually underwent, as Danzy describes it, a "terrible divorce" that "affected me and my siblings quite profoundly." She wrote about her family history in her 2009 memoir, Where Did You Sleep Last Night?

Senna recevied her B.A. from Stanford University and an M.F.A. from the University of California at Irvine. There, she received several creative writing awards.

Her three novels — Caucasia (1998), Symptomatic (2004), and New People (2017) — all feature a view of society from a biracial perspective. The eight stories collected in You Are Free (2011) also deal with the intersection of race, family, and friendship.

Senna's books have been well received, gaining recognition from Book of the Month Club and American Library Association. In 2002, she received the Whiting Writers Award and in 2004 was named a Fellow for the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.  She has also been nominated for the Orange Prize and was a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Danzy Senna lives in Los Angeles with her husband, writer Percival Everett, and their son. (Adapted from Wikipedia and bitchmedia. Retrieved 8/21/2017.)