My roots lie in more than one discipline. I hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Arizona (1999) and have taught fiction writing at the Hugo House since 2007. I also have a journalism degree and spent seven years as a staff writer and editor for weekly newspapers in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. I’ve been a freelance editorial consultant since 2014 and joined the Hugo House’s manuscript consultation roster in 2016. My own short fiction has won numerous awards, including the Narrative Prize in Fiction, and appears most recently in phoebe, Kweli Journal, and the anthology, Puro Chicanx Literature of the 21st Century.
My specialty is literary fiction and nonfiction/memoir with a literary bent. I’m also happy to review genre fiction that aspires to literary sensibilities. I love writers who love language, who aren’t afraid either to be funny or to go somewhere dark (or sometimes both), who are exploring what might be familiar cultural and psychological material in a fresh way. A notable percentage of my clientele are writers of color, and in particular, Latinx writers, though my services are whole-heartedly available to all. My first novel is forthcoming from Camino del Sol/University of Arizona Press in October 2023.
