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.
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.
“History Lesson with Mango”
Published Fall 2023
Somewhere on the way to Ensenada, we stopped for the view and ended up with a bag full of mangoes from a beach vendor. Maybe we got so many because Carlos was trying out his Spanish or because Cesar was showing off his. We three were in college, just beginning to learn about the world and ourselves.
Latest Blog Post
My friend Debra came for a visit from Seattle on her way to an eight-day hike on the Costa Brava. In Debra’s three and a half days in Málaga and then three more days in Madrid, we did a lot of walking, a lot of talking, and a lot of eating. In between, there was a theater performance, a fashion show, live jazz, a flamenco show, a literary reading and workshop, and a couple of museum visits. In Málaga, we…
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.”