Natalie Baszile is the author of the novel, Queen Sugar, which was adapted for seven television seasons by writer/director Ava DuVernay, and co-produced by Oprah Winfrey. Queen Sugar was named one of the San Francisco Chronicles’ Best Books of 2014, was long-listed for the Crooks Corner Southern Book Prize, and nominated for an NAACP Image Award.
In her new non-fiction book, We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating of African American Farmers, Land & Legacy, Natalie brings together essays, poems, conversations, portraits, and first-person narratives to tell the story of Black people’s connection to the land from Emancipation to the present. We Are Each Other’s Harvest is an Amazon Editor’s Pick and was a Wall Street Journal Book of the Year, 2021.
Her non-fiction essays has appeared in National Geographic, The Bitter Southerner, O, The Oprah Magazine, and numerous anthologies. She has taught fiction at Saint Mary’s College and Sierra Nevada University.
A native Californian, Natalie’s southern roots stem from Louisiana, South Carolina, and Alabama. Her maternal Great-great grandfather, Mac Hall (b. 1845) was a farmer, merchant and beekeeper. Natalie’s passion for the stories of Black farmers and land stewards comes from a desire to shift the narrative around agriculture, farming, and labor.
Natalie has a M.A. in Afro-American Studies from UCLA, and an MFA from Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers. She has had residencies at Ragdale Foundation, VCCA, Hedgebrook, and Djerassi where she was the SFFILM and Bonnie Rattner Fellow. Natalie lives in San Francisco.
“Natalie Baszile tells a tale of the South that is as deeply rooted in time and place as it is universal. . . A heartfelt and beautiful debut.” — Ruth Ozeki, author of A Tale for the Time Being
