“It's been a long time since I've fallen in love with a character as deeply as I fell for Living Color's Angie Rubio. Donna Miscolta writes gorgeous, luminous sentences, at turns funny and heartbreaking, searing and wise...”
—SHARMA SHIELDS, author of The Cassandra
About Donna
Donna Miscolta’s most recent book is Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories from Jaded Ibis Press in 2020. Her story collection Hola and Goodbye, winner of the Doris Bakwin Award for Writing by a Woman, was published by Carolina Wren Press in 2016. It won an Independent Publishers award for Best Regional Fiction and an International Latino Book Award for Best Latino Focused Fiction. She’s also the author of the novel When the de la Cruz Family Danced published in 2011 by Signal 8 Press. Recent stories and essays have appeared in McSweeney’s, Atticus Review, Los Angeles Review, and the anthology Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort in the Time of Covid-19.
Also by Donna
Watch the Trailers
Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories
When the de la Cruz Family Danced
Featured Stories and Essays
"Mother Daughter Mother Daughter"
Published Fall/Winter, 2023
My daughter walks around her apartment shirtless. Her breasts are impressive given the tradition of small-breasted women in our family. Her breasts also happen to be raw-nippled and heavy with milk, the whole package exposed to the air, to the uncurtained, second-floor windows daring anyone to gawk, and to me who would consider covered-up breasts in such circumstances silly.
“Ordinary”
Published September 2025
Has tenido un aborto. You’ve had an abortion.
This observation is from Fernando, my acupuncturist in Málaga, Spain where I live now, where I’ve turned over a new life. Not that my old life was depraved or corrupt. No, it was perfectly ordinary, including the abortion part.
Latest Blog Post
Learning Spanish has always come with an emotional element for me. But I hadn’t cried while learning Spanish until this month. I took the insane step of signing up for a creative writing workshop at the local library here in Málaga. I’d written some short pieces in Spanish, usually essays, for my online teacher Nathalie and found that each time, the writing flowed more easily. Thinking in Spanish was becoming more natural. Sebastian, my in-person Spanish teacher, has long encouraged…
Read MorePraise for Donna's Work
“Miscolta is a pitch-perfect prose stylist and a passionately empathetic creator: she savors sentence-making and attends to the all-important nuanced moments between people.”
—Antonya Nelson, author of Bound
“Miscolta writes with the precision demanded by the short story, but with the range, scope, and generosity we crave in the novel, and what results is an unforgettable reading experience.”
—Lysley Tenorio, author of Monstress
“Miscolta writes with heart for all the brown girls who feel invisible. These stories say with love and sincerity: I see you.”
—Ivelisse Rodriguez, author of Love War Stories
“When the de la Cruz Family Danced is my kind of book—characters I fell in love with, prose that made me swoon, dialogue that rang true. Donna Miscolta did something wonderful here: she created a world that I didn’t want to leave.”