Michael Nava

Early life and family Nava grew up in Gardenland, a predominantly working-class Mexican neighborhood in Sacramento, California that he described as "not as an American suburb at all, but rather as a Mexican village, transported perhaps from Guanajuato, where my grandmother's family originated, and set down lock, stock and chicken coop in the middle of California." His maternal family settled there in 1920 after escaping from the Mexican Revolution. Nava's grandmother was an "influential force" whose "piety and humility was highlighted by her Catholic beliefs." He was the first person in his family to go to college; he attended Colorado College and "acquired a special affinity for literature and writing."

Legal career Nava worked in the Los Angeles City Attorney's office, where he was a deputy attorney and prosecutor on about 50 jury trials. which resulted in the first published decision to uphold an HIV/AIDS anti-discrimination statute.

From 2007 to 2009, he was a member of the State Bar of California's Council on Access and Fairness, which advises the State Bar's board of governors on diversity issues. In 2008, he wrote The Servant of All: Humility, Humanity, and Judicial Diversity, a law review article where he put forth the case for judicial diversity.

In 2010, Nava ran for Seat 15 of the San Francisco Superior Court. In the June election, he received a plurality of the votes, but the position required a majority. In the November run-off election with incumbent Richard Ulmer, he received 87,511 votes (46.83%) compared to Ulmer's 99,342 (53.17%).

Writing career After graduating from Stanford Law School, Nava began writing his first novel.

In 1994, he co-authored the book Created Equal: Why Gay Rights Matter to America.

After not having written any new novels since 2000, Nava announced in 2008 that he had drafted a new work, The Children of Eve, which was set in the Mexican Revolution. He based one of the main characters on his grandfather. The Children of Eve would later be redone as a quartet of historical fiction novels; the first book would be titled The City of Palaces. In 2016, he published a revised version of the first Henry Rios novel, The Little Death, which he retitled "Lay Your Sleeping Head." In 2018, he adapted the revised novel into season one of an audiodrama podcast called "The Henry Rios Mysteries Podcast." In 2019, he started his own small press, Persigo Press, with the goal of publishing a new edition of the existing Rios novels and to add new novels to the series. The first new novel, Carved in Bone, was published in October 2019. Nava also announced he hoped to publish other LGBTQ writers and writers of color through Persigo Press.

Personal life In October 2008, Nava married his partner George Herzog, an oncology nurse at the Veteran's Administration hospital in San Francisco. California Supreme Court justice Carlos R. Moreno presided over the ceremony. They live in Daly City, California. Lambda Literary Award for Gay Small Press Book Award Winner Finale Edited

1993 The Hidden Law Lambda Literary Award for Gay Mystery Winner 1997 Death of Friends Lambda Literary Award for Gay Mystery Winner 1998 The Burning Plain

2002 Rag and Bone Lambda Literary Award for Gay Mystery Winner 2015 The City of Palaces Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction Finalist 2017 Lay Your Sleeping Head

2018 Street People

2020 Carved in Bone Lambda Literary Award for Gay Mystery Winner 2022 Lies With Man

Publications Hometowns: Gay Men Write About Where They Belong (1991) - "Gardenland" Created Equal: Why Gay Rights Matter to America, with Robert Dawidoff (1994) A Member of the Family: Gay Men Write About Their Families (1994) - "Abuelo" Finale: Short Stories of Mystery and Suspense (1997) - editor Street People (2017)

Henry Rios series The Little Death (1986) Goldenboy (1988) Howtown (1990) The Hidden Law (1992) The Death of Friends (1996) The Burning Plain (1997) Rag and Bone (2001) Lay Your Sleeping Head (2016) (This is a reworked version of The Little Death) Carved in Bone (2019) (This is a reworked version of Goldenboy) Lies With Man (2021)

The Children of Eve series The City of Palaces (2014)

Anthologies edited Finale: Stories of Mystery (1989)

Anthology contributions Certain Voices, edited by Darryl Pilcher (1991) Equality: What Do You Think About When You Think of Equality?, edited by Paul Alan Fahey (2017)