Kirkus Reviews awarded Luster the 2020 Kirkus Prize for Fiction. It has been praised by Carmen Maria Machado, Brit Bennett, Angela Flournoy, and Zadie Smith. It is also part of Marie Claire's book club and has been lauded by outlets including Elle, the HuffPost, BuzzFeed News, the New York Times. The book's publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux named the book its novel of August 2020 as part of their "Dare to Imagine" campaign. Leilani's debut novel Luster received significant attention at its publishing. 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 also worked as an archivist at Macmillan. Later, she worked at a scientific journal, for the US Department of Defense, and as a delivery person for Postmates in Washington, D.C. Her first job was as an imaging specialist at, having previously worked in the archives of Marist College as an undergraduate. She graduated Marist College located in Poughkeepsie, NY in 2012, where she studied English and psychology. Having attended an art high school, Leilani expected to become a visual artist. She grew up as a Seventh-day Adventist, and later left the church. Leilani grew up in a family of artists in the Bronx before they moved to a suburb of Albany, New York. Her debut novel Luster was released in 2020 to critical acclaim. Raven Leilani Baptiste (born August 26, 1990) is an American writer who publishes under the name Raven Leilani.
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