Aya de Leon (born 1967) is an American novelist and activist who teaches at the University of California Berkeley.
de Leon is of Puerto Rican, African-American, and West Indian heritage, and much of her work explores issues of race, gender, socio-economic class, body, nation and the climate crisis.
In 2001, she began to develop the hip-hop theater show Thieves in the Temple: The Reclaiming of Hip Hop, focused on fighting sexism and consumerism in hip hop[2][3] She began her college teaching career at Stanford University in 2001.
She earned her Master of Fine Arts in fiction from Antioch University Los Angeles.
In 2013 she began to blog and to write for various online outlets, such as Harper's Bazaar, xojane, Bitch Magazine, Ebony, Racialicious, Writers Digest, Fusion, Womans Day, Movement Strategy Center, and The Feminist Wire.