Raven Leilani is the author of the novel Luster (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020). Her work has appeared in Conjunctions, Granta, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Narrative, New England Review, and elsewhere. Leilani received her MFA from New York University and was an Axinn Foundation Writer-in-Residence. She is the recipient of the 2021 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award.  

Photo by Nina Subin