Dayna is a third generation Angelena whose writing explores the role race, ethnicity, and class play for Latinx diasporic communities when they are generations removed from the immigrant experience. Themes of racial and cultural ambivalence, authenticity, and assimilation permeate her work. She is currently completing a novel and short story collection. Her novel, The Battle at St. Martha’s, tackles the adolescent identity politics of a privileged Chicana in prep school. Her untitled short story collection centers around the experiences of privileged women of color and examines the different strategies they use to survive a white patriarchal society and the battle wounds they incur and inflict upon themselves in the process of navigating career, relationships, and fertility. She is an alumna of Voices of Our Nation (VONA) Summer Workshop, Tin House Summer Workshop, and a graduate of Stanford University. Her writing is featured in PANK, The Seventh Wave, Gulf Coast, and The Masters Review as a short story finalist.
