Dayna Bateman is a recovering tech worker (MSc, HCI) and an emerging writer. Her work has appeared in trade publications like Internet Retailing and literary journals like Pacifica and American Literary Review.
Dayna received a 2026 PEN/Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History for her hybrid memoir + researched narrative non-fiction account of her father’s career as a record man during the golden age of the vinyl record business. The same project was selected as the runner-up winner of the 2025 Bridport Memoir Prize.
In 2025 I received the American Literary Review Award in Essays for Deracination, Or How to Disappear, which interrogates the decision of my Indigenous Sámi ancestors to pass for White in the racial climate of 1880s America. I am a 2023 Storyknife Fellow and an alum of the Tin House, Kenyon Review, and Granta Memoir Workshops.
Current project
I am currently seeking representation for Hustling Vinyl, a narrative nonfiction account of growing up on the spinning edge of the vinyl record business. This project has received the generous support of PEN/America and The Bridport Prize. I am forever grateful to Storyknife Writers Retreat for hosting me as a resident in Homer, Alaska, where the book had an opportunity to take shape.
