As a Writer, I create essays, poems, videos and articles that infuse my audience’s lives with wisdom, wonder and/or wackiness.
I have been a word woman – a writer – as long as I can remember. I learned to read before kindergarten and started writing stories in primary school. My epic sci fi drama was entitled Space Sercher, and I claimed to have misspelled “searcher” on purpose because I was too ashamed to admit my mistake! Around the same time, I won an award from the Daughters of the American Revolution for a less fictional (and far more patriotic) essay. Inspired by the life and poetry of Phyllis Wheatley, I started writing poems in fifth grade. The first one I turned in to my teacher was quite ornate in tone and soaring in theme — lots of stuff about nature and God. She didn’t believe I was the author.
Later in high school, I wrote for and helped edit the school newspaper and yearbook, and published my first poem – in a textbook about gifted kids. I wrote a regular column for The Daily Bruin as a UCLA undergrad, and spent most of my twenties working as a freelance journalist. I pitched and published pieces on race, Chicano art, Latino and Native American culture, health care, and my family history in a diversity of publications including Black Diaspora, Latin Style, Interrace, Native Americas, Sacramento News & Review and The Press-Enterprise.
In graduate school I explored the world of academic writing, and my research, mostly on Hispanic/Latino identity labels, was published in the Journal of Communication Inquiry, International and Intercultural Communication Annual, The Howard Journal of Communications, The SAGE Handbook of Conflict Communication and Latinos and Latinas in US History and Culture: An Encyclopedia.
As a professional consultant in DEI, leadership, and talent management, I became a regular contributor to The Huffington Post, Workforce Magazine, Diversity Executive, TLNT.com, and ERE.net. I have also been published in Training Magazine, American Diversity Report and Diversity Best Practices. I’m currently a regular contributor to Medium.
My poetry has appeared in the Malpais Review; Snapdragon Journal; Deep Times: A Journal of the Work That Reconnects; Catching Calliope; We Don’t Break, We Burn: Poems of Resilience; and Fixed & Free Poetry Anthology 2021. You can find more on my poetry page or at purplelyrics.org.
Whether you’re interested in soulful poetry, provocative essays about life and the workplace, academic research on racial identity or insights into Chicano-Latino culture in the 1990s, you can find it all here!
Or … would you rather read some sassy essays about dating, mental health, and being an a**hole? Read my work on Medium!
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