Natalia Sylvester Books in Order

Natalia Sylvester was born in Lima, Peru, and came to the United States when she was four. She grew up in Florida and in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, places that show up again and again in her work. That feeling of living between countries, languages, and versions of home runs through much of what she writes.

Writing was there early. Sylvester has said she wanted to write for most of her life, and even as a kid she was sending essays to teen magazines. She studied creative writing at the University of Miami, then built a career around words through fiction, essays, and articles. Her nonfiction has appeared in outlets including the New York Times, Bustle, Electric Literature, Latina, and McSweeney's.

She writes across age groups, but her questions stay pretty consistent.

Her first novel, Chasing the Sun, takes readers to Lima during a period of political unrest. On the surface, it's a kidnapping story. Underneath, it's also a book about marriage, family history, and the uneasy gap between what people say and what they carry alone. Readers who like suspense with emotional weight tend to find a lot to hold onto there.

With Everyone Knows You Go Home, she widened the lens. The book starts with a striking premise, a bride meeting her dead father-in-law on her wedding day, and uses that opening to explore immigration, grief, marriage, and the long afterlife of family decisions. It won an International Latino Book Award and the Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters, which tells you something about how strongly it landed.

Then she turned to YA.

Her young adult novels, Running and Breathe and Count Back from Ten, both center teens trying to figure out what they owe their families and what they owe themselves. In Running, a Cuban American girl watches her father's presidential campaign pull the curtain back on power, politics, and the cost of staying quiet. In Breathe and Count Back from Ten, a Peruvian American teen with hip dysplasia dreams of becoming a mermaid performer in Florida while pushing back against shame, secrecy, and other people's decisions about her body. That novel, which draws from Sylvester's own experience with hip dysplasia, earned both a Pura Belpré Honor and a Schneider Family Honor.

Across all these books, Sylvester returns to people at turning points. Her characters are often caught between countries, generations, or public and private selves. She writes a lot about belonging, borders, body autonomy, faith, family pressure, and the slow work of finding your voice. Peru, Texas, and Florida are not just backdrops in her fiction. They shape the choices her characters can make, and the ones they can't.

She now lives in South Florida. Alongside her books for adults, teens, and children, she has taught writing at the university level and continues to be active in literary and school communities. That mix of teacher, essayist, and novelist feels right for her work. Her stories are interested in what people inherit, what they hide, and what finally helps them speak.