Natalie is the author of the novel, Queen Sugar, which is being adapted for television by writer/director Ava DuVernay, and co-produced by Oprah Winfrey for OWN, Oprah’s television network. Natalie is developing Harvest, a character-driven documentary series about farmers around the globe. The project is inspired by her new non-fiction book, We Are Each Other’s Harvest: A Celebration of African American Farmers, Land & Legacy, forthcoming from HarperCollins (April 2021).
Natalie is currently a resident at SFFILM. She has a M.A. in Afro-American Studies from UCLA, and is a graduate of Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers. Queen Sugar was named one of the San Francisco Chronicles’ Best Books of 2014 and was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Natalie has had residencies at the Ragdale Foundation, Virginia Center for the Arts, Hedgebrook, and the Djerassi Resident Arts Program where she received the SFFILM and the Bonnie Rattner Fellowships. Her non-fiction work has appeared in Lenny Letter, The Bitter Southerner, O, The Oprah Magazine, and a number of anthologies. For two years, she was Writer in Residence at Saint Mary’s College where she taught a fiction workshop in the MFA Program. Natalie lives in Oakland and San Francisco.