Undercover Mexican Girl spent her childhood in Aguascalientes, Mexico and Los Angeles, California (specifically South El Monte, if you’re familiar with the San Gabriel Valley).
Her parents are from Mexico, so she has strong roots there, but she doesn’t completely identify with traditional Mexican culture. Yet, she doesn’t always connect with mainstream American culture either (whatever that is). She moved to Austin in 1998 where she lived for nearly two decades. (There was no turning back when she got her first pair of cowboy boots in 2006.)
She’s been writing stories since elementary school, and at some point, she went to college and earned a BA in History & Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Texas State University at San Marcos.
She’s worked as a violin shop manager, an English teacher, freelance writer and editor, in the nonprofit and start-up world doing public relations and marketing, and in local city politics doing community outreach.
Some of Undercover Mexican Girl’s favorite people, places, and things, in no particular order: Berlin, the color red, sushi, classical music, Guanajuato, old-school conjunto, homemade menudo and pozole, gypsy music, craft beer, the ocean, playing the violin, piano, and ukulele, Anne of Green Gables, 1920s and 30s jazz, fizzy water, jug band music, the author Kay Bowles, and Gael Garcia Bernal.
You can read more of her writing on Latino Magazine, LatinoMetro, Popular Hispanics, and the Austin Post. She also has a monthly column in the print version of TODO Austin, although she is currently on hiatus. Her short story, The Sleeping Mexican, was published in the Spring 2016 issue of Southwestern American Literature.
She recently moved to Durham, North Carolina where she lives with her husband, daughter, and rat terrier.