ABOUT

My mami said I was born a pain in the nalgas. Or rather, I was born eager to leave the womb and pave my own path. I arrived three weeks early and with double the Ls an Emilly Giselle Prado might be expected to have. My hometown is Redwood City, California. I mostly grew up in Belmont, two towns over, because my parents—a Mexican immigrant that came to California at the age of two and a Mexican American U.S. citizen who was raised in Mexico until 17—wanted their children to come of age in a place where college was expected. It also happened to be a place that was predominantly white, and that never really felt like home.

Nowadays I live in Portland, Oregon with my partner and our rescue pit bull. I continually come back to the importance of healing and of community in my work. I’ve used writing as a tool to process, to amplify the stories of people who have historically been pushed to the margins through journalism, and now to share my own experiences through memoir, essay, and fiction forms. I didn’t always have the ganas or access to think of writing as a career, but I’m honored to center it in my work today as an artist, educator, and community organizer. I didn’t grow up knowing this life I’m building was within reach but my Mami always believed in the power of my writing, and I finally do too.

Long bio:

Emilly Prado is a writer, DJ, and educator living in Portland, Oregon with roots in the San Francisco Bay Area and Michoacán, Mexico. She is the author of Funeral for Flaca (Future Tense Books, 2021), an essay collection called, “Utterly vulnerable, bold, and unique,” by Ms. Magazine and a winner of a 2022 Pacific Northwest Book Award, a 2021 bronze winner of the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in Essays, and several other honors. She is also the author of Examining Assimilation (Enslow, 2019), a youth non-fiction book at the intersections of identity and U.S. history. As a former full-time freelance journalist, Emilly spent half a decade reporting on a wide range of topics, most often centered on amplifying the voices and experiences of people from marginalized communities. Her writing and photographs have appeared in more than 30 publications including NPR, Marie Claire, Bitch Media, Eater, Oxygen, and The Oregonian. She has received fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the 2018 Emerging Journalists Community Stories Fellowship (presented by Oregon Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Pulitzer Prizes), and the Randolph College MFA, and has been awarded residencies from Caldera Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Guapamacátaro, and Sou’Wester. Emilly is a co-founder of BIPOC arts non-profit, Portland in Color. She has worked with students of all ages in settings such as public high schools, universities, MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility, and literary organizations including Tin House, Lighthouse, Corporeal Writing, Literary Arts, and the Independent Publishing Resource Center. She teaches creative writing at the Pacific Northwest College of Arts’ MFA in Creative Writing and MA in Critical Studies. When not writing, teaching, or organizing, Emilly moonlights as DJ Mami Miami with Noche Libre, the Latiné DJ collective she co-founded in 2017. Learn more at emillyprado.com or on social media @emillygprado.

Emilly is currently writing a memoir, and a novel, and is seeking literary representation.

Short bio: