Karina Muñiz-Pagán, United States

Karina Muñiz-Pagán is a writer, literary translator and organizer, born to a Scandinavian mother and Mexican father in San Francisco, California. She has an MFA in Prose from Mills College where she was the Community Engagement Fellow and taught creative writing to members of Mujeres Unidas y Activas; a Latina immigrant rights organization where she also served as Political Director. As a result of the generative workshops, Karina co-founded the writers’ group, Las Malcriadas, and edited and translated the bilingual anthology Mujeres Mágicas: Domestic Workers Right to Write, published in 2019 by Freedom Voices Press.

She has also earned MAs in Urban Planning and Latin American Studies from UCLA and has written and led campaigns focused on place-based storytelling and the power of understanding the social history of the built-environment. Karina is a contributing author of the books, Endangered Species, Enduring Values: An Anthology of San Francisco Writers of Color, edited by Shizue Seigel, Peace Press and Working for Justice: The LA Model of Organizing and Advocacy, edited by Ruth Milkman, Victor Narro and Joshua Bloom, Cornell University Press.  

Karina is currently working on a memoir called Flygirl about her search for home as a queer Xicana, community organizer raised on Hip Hop, and her political education journeys throughout the US, México, South America, Asia and Europe. She is an alumna of Voices of our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA) and lives in Long Beach, CA and and works for the National Domestic Workers Alliance.