Dawnie Walton

In 1994, Walton began her career in journalism as a recent high school graduate interning for The Florida Times-Union — she wrote for the Teen Rap section of the paper that existed at the time.[1] Her journalism career continued after college at The Oregonian in Portland and The Washington Post in D.C.[1] She then moved to New York City where she worked as a magazine editor for a number of publications, including Essence, Entertainment Weekly, Getty Images, and LIFE.[1][6][5]

Walton published her debut novel, The Final Revival of Opal & Nev, in 2021 to critical acclaim. The book covers the fictionalized oral history of a 1970s interracial rock duo.[1][6]

She was inspired to write the book after seeing the documentary called 20 Feet from Stardom about backup singers.[1] It featured Lynn Mabry and Ednah Holt who were singing with Talking Heads, and Walton found herself drawn to these "two amazing Black women."[1] Thus began the inspiration for her first novel.[1]

Walton wrote this novel over seven years, for much of that time working on it before or after her day job, waking up at 5 am or staying up late.[6][7] Walton was working as the deputy managing editor at Essence in 2015 when she decided to leave her job entirely to work on the novel full-time.[7]

While working on this novel, Walton attended writing residencies at MacDowell Colony and the Tin House Summer Workshop,[5] and she received her master's degree in Fine Arts from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2013.[1][8]

The novel went on to win the 2022 Virginia Commonwealth University Cabell First Novelist Award, the 2022 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, and the 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize.[9][6][10] The book was named one of the best books of 2021 by The Washington Post, National Public Radio, Esquire and President Obama.[9] The audiobook version of the novel won the 2022 Audie Award for Fiction.[9]

After publishing her first novel, Walton co-founded a new startup with Longreads founder Mark Armstrong and author Deesha Philyaw.[11] The startup, called Ursa, aims to celebrate and promote short fiction by underrepresented authors through a website, a podcast, and publishing—including publishing audio stories.[11] Walton and Philyaw host the podcast together.[11]