Camila Núñez-Bergsneider is a Historian with a master's in Art History. Her main interest is comics studies, focussing on comic books or graphic novels that propose an alternative approach to History, Memory and the construction of individual and collective identities. Currently she's a T.A. at the Spanish and Portuguese Department and a Spanish Literatures PhD Student.

PhD Student, Teaching Assistant in Spanish

Oriette D'Angelo is a PhD Candidate in Spanish with a Graduate Certificate in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies. She holds an MFA in Spanish Creative Writing from the University of Iowa and a masters in Digital Communications and Media Arts from DePaul University, Chicago. She is the founder and director of the literary magazine Digo.palabra.txt and the web-research project #PoetasVenezolanas. Author of the poetry books En mi boca se abrirá la noche (Libero Editorial, 2023); Pájaro que muerde. Diario de Iowa, 2018-2019 (LP5 Editora, 2022); and Cardiopatías (Monte Ávila Editores, 2016; Winner of the Premio para Autores Inéditos by Monte Ávila Editores, 2014. Translated into English by Lupita Eyde-Tucker as Homeland of Swarms and published by co.im.press in 2024). She also compiled the book Amanecimos sobre la palabra (Team Poetero Ediciones, 2017) about young Venezuelan poets. In 2022, she was awarded the Stephen Lynn Smith Memorial Scholarship for Social Justice granted by the Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies. Her research focuses on political and personal trauma representations in contemporary Latin American literature.

PhD Student, Teaching Assistant in Spanish

PhD Student, Teaching Assistant in Spanish

PhD Student, Teaching Assistant in Spanish

María Leonor Márquez Ponce is a first-generation Ph.D. candidate in Spanish Literature. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Spanish and an M.A. in Spanish Literature from the University of Iowa as well. Her main interests include Mexican and Latino/a/x literature, oral history/testimonio, placemaking, migrant families, emotional transnationalism, and belonging. Her research focuses on Chicano/Latinx testimonios within education. Currently, she is a Graduate Teaching Assistant and teaches a Spanish-speaking course. Additionally, she is working on the LNACC Oral History Project for the Library's Special Collections and Archives.

My need to understand migration and explore my identity nurtured my curiosity and personal connections to research. I am interested in the intersections of migration, cultural belonging and heritage, community formation, and citizenship as seen in popular culture and everyday life.

Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Mariana Mazer is a writer and book maker, currently in her fifth year as a PhD candidate in Spanish at the University of Iowa. Her dissertation addresses and engages with the book as an object, examining the manifold stories that can abode in the materiality and corporeality of Latin American books.

Monica Quintero Restrepo Graduate Student, Masters of Fine Arts in Spanish Creative Writing Iowa Arts Fellow Mónica Quintero Restrepo is a cultural journalist with a master's degree in Literary Hermeneutics. Her primary interests include poetry, fiction, cultural journalism, and pastry. Additionally, she is the author of the poetry book 'Tal vez a las cinco.' Mónica also has an alter ego, Camila Avril.

Gleisson Alves Santos is a translator, educator and researcher who engages with these practices through an artistic and interdisciplinary approach. He is a second year MFA student in Literary Translation, translating from and into Portuguese, and a Teaching Assistant in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. One of his translation works into English involves a body of contemporary poems by Afro-Brazilian poets. As a Graduate Teaching Assistant, he has been teaching courses such as Intermediate Portuguese and Brazilian Narrative in Translation.

Violeta Vaca Delgado was born in Huelva, Andalusia, Spain. She holds bachelor’s degrees in Mathematics and Comparative Literature from the University of Granada, where she graduated with honors, and a master’s degree in Philosophical Criticism and Argumentation from the Autonomous University of Madrid. She was awarded a research scholarship twice at the Residencia de Estudiantes de Madrid, where she lived for two years.

Tijuana, California (1993) Born in California and raised in Tijuana, a border child. She goes back and forth between Mexico and the United States so she's fluent in Spanglish although she writes mostly in Spanish. Currently a Spanish Creative Writing, MFA candidate.