Natalia Perez is a writer, a recent journalism graduate, and an empath currently residing in the Boston area. A native New Englander, she’s fond of seltzer, autumns in Boston, and snowy winters. Her works are generally in the form of feature writing, advocacy journalism, and vibrant storytelling celebrating women, culture, and emotional healing. In her spare time, you may likely find her episodes deep into a New Girl binge, in the midst of a deep dive on personality types, or reading great stories.
She’s passionate about communication, people, and artistic expression, and believes that words are our most inexhaustible source of wonder, power, and beauty
How did you begin writing?
I think, as someone who spends so much of her life inside her head, I’ve always gravitated towards writing stories and processing my thoughts on paper. The first time I considered writing as a career was on a Tuesday night in 2005. I was eight years old, and my mother, a spunky Puerto Rican woman, squealed as she bolted into our living room and picked me up. She’d just opened a letter from the Anthology of Young Americans that said my poem had been selected for publishing. We danced around our dining room table for what seemed like hours. It was the first piece of myself I’d allowed into the world, and although it was a silly little poem about how much I liked writing cursive, this acceptance affirmed my love of words and became a sort of a driving creative force for me.
Who are your favorite writers? What are your favorite books?
This has always been a tough one for me, because every time I finish getting through a book, a feature story, or a work of writing it often becomes my new favorite for a while, but I’ll share a couple of books and writers that quickly come to mind. Many of them are YA Books, which I fully believe need a lot more love than they get, like Delirium by Lauren Oliver and The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. As for writers, I adore every single writer that’s ever worked on hit shows like This Is Us, Insecure, and Dead to Me, because their scripts are brilliant. I also dearly love Rudy Fransisco, Brené Brown, and Lisa Ling.
What are your goals within the profession of journalism?
I’m still finding my specific niche within journalism, but I do know that I want to work as an advocacy journalist in Puerto Rico, my mother’s home, and other Latin American countries, doing race work and telling the stories of Afro-Latino(a) communities who are facing stark inequalities that have yet to be acknowledged.
To view more of Natalia Perez’s work please visit their website.