Donna Miscolta

Donna Miscolta is the author of four books of fiction: Ofelia and Norma, Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories, Hola and Goodbye: Una Familia in Stories, and When the de la Cruz Family Danced.

Donna’s newest book of fiction Ofelia and Norma, with a publication date of September 29, 2026, is from Regal House Publishing. It’s a novel about body image, family dysfunction, and sisterhood. But mostly it’s about female strength and power.

In it, identical large-bodied sisters Ofelia and Norma navigate alone the perils of an anti-large-body world in which one sister toys with disordered eating and the other is the victim of a frat prank, a violation that together the sisters take upon themselves to avenge as they recognize their own strength and power and claim their spaces in the world. Writer Erica Bauermeister captures the novel’s essence and intended impact with this summary:

Ofelia and Norma is a powerful novel, destined to both break and mend your heart, told with love and deep insight, anger and compassion. Norma and Ofelia are heroines to root for as they grow from large girls into women of stature. Some readers will feel seen; others will have their vision corrected. Either way, this is a book that will change you.

Donna’s previous book was Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories, published in 2020 by Jaded Ibis Press, a feminist press and a perfect match for Angie Rubio’s burgeoning awareness of her personhood in these stories. Each story represents an event or experience in a particular grade in school, a life lesson about winning and losing, belonging and not belonging, or about overcoming the divisions in life that can be caused by race, gender, or just a different way of walking through life. Whether the issue at hand relates to skin color, body image, sexual awakening, or some other aspect of peer and social pressure or the mere act of growing up, the stories cohere to tell a story of Angie’s struggle to find out who she is and her place in the world.

Writer Sharma Shields’s lovely praise of the book also provides a peek at its protagonist and storyline.

“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, and—through the observations of one smart, shy, awesome young girl—she deftly exposes the casual and systemic racism of the 1960s and 70s. This is fiction at its very best: intimate, universal, historical, and relevant as hell to our current era. Angie Rubio is my new favorite protagonist; prepare for her to steal your heart.”

Donna’s second book, the story collection Hola and Goodbye: Una Familia in Stories, was published by Carolina Wren Press (now Blair) in 2016 as a result of winning the Doris Bakwin Award for Writing by a Woman, judged that year by Randall Kenan. The book won an Independent Publishers award for Best Regional Fiction and an International Latino Book Award for Best Latino Focused Fiction.

Hola and Goodbye has three parts and begins with four women− immigrants from Mexico − each of whom has her own self-titled story of adjustment or assimilation, including Lupita Camacho and her best friend Rosa. The second set of stories focuses on Lupita’s grown children and their never quite realized dreams. The third set of stories belongs to Lupita’s grandchildren, each struggling in some way for a sense of self.

Lysley Tenorio said “Miscolta writes with the precision demanded of the short story, but with the range, scope, and generosity we crave in the novel, and what results is an unforgettable reading experience.”

Donna’s first book, the novel When the de la Cruz Family Danced was published in 2011 by Signal 8 Press, a Hong Kong-based, independent publisher, as a result of the editor reading an excerpt from the manuscript in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. Both Cha and Signal 8 focus on writing that reflects the Asian and Asian American experience.

When the de la Cruz Family Danced is set in Southern California but has as its protagonist an immigrant from the Philippines. The novel explores the ties within family and how circumstances of birth, immigration, and assimilation tug at those ties.

Antonya Nelson said, “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.”

Rick Barot said, “Miscolta’s novel is intricate, tender, and elegantly written – a necessary novel for our times.

Cristina Garcia said, “This is a complex story of immigration and loss that packs an emotional punch.”

Donna was born in San Diego and grew up in National City, California. She received a bachelor’s degree in zoology from San Diego State and later received master’s degrees in education and public administration from the University of Washington in Seattle. During the thirty years that she worked as a project manager in local government, she took classes and workshops in fiction writing. In 2023, she moved from Seattle to Málaga, Spain.

Read a more personal, first-person bio on the Regal House Publishing website.