Bio

Natasha Hakimi Zapata holds a Creative Writing M.F.A. from Boston University and both a B.A. in Spanish and a B.A. in English with a creative writing concentration from the University of California, Los Angeles. In college she received scholarships from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Hispanic Heritage Foundation, the Smithsonian Latino Center and the UCLA Alumni Association. She has also received several awards for creative writing, including the May Merill Miller Award for Poetry in 2008 and 2010, the Ruth Brill Award for short fiction in 2010 and the Falling Leaves Award in 2010. Most recently she was awarded the 2012 Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship and was a semifinalist for the Dzanc Books/ Guernica International Literary Award. She was awarded L.A. Press Club Awards in 2016 for her book review of the poetry collection I Am the Beggar of the World and in 2017 for her piece "Free to Be a Fool’: Behind the Scenes at the British Parliament’s Debate on Banning Trump."

Natasha's passion for revealing the truth through writing has also led her to journalism. She has been published in Los Angeles magazine, where she interned, and continues to blog for it about Los Angeles events. In addition, she has worked for the renowned literary journal AGNI and has launched Truthdig's Poetry section as Truthdig's assistant and poetry editor. In 2016, Literal Publishing released bilingual editions of her translations of Alicia Borinsky's My Husband's Woman and Liliana Lukin's Theater of Operations. She hopes to continue writing for all three genres, balancing her passions for fiction and nonfiction, while often combining them in her creative work.