Other Writing
An excerpt from my recent book Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories was recorded by KUOW at the 2014 LitCrawl as part of the Seattle7Writers’ Seven@Seven performance at Richard Hugo House. Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories was published by Jaded Ibis Press in fall 2020.
Stories
Many of the stories below are part of my collection Hola and Goodbye, which was selected by Randall Kenan for the Doris Bakwin Award for Writing by a Woman in 2015 and was published by Carolina Wren Press in 2016. It had previously been a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award, the AWP Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction, and the Brighthorse Prize.
- “Mother, Mother, Mother, Mother, Earth,” in Pacifica Literary Review, January 2022
- “Adela Reflected,” in South Seattle Emerald, March 26, 2021
- “Slumber Party,” an excerpt from Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories in Joyland, September 17, 2020
- “Angie Rubio’s Report Card by Angie Rubio’s Mother” in failbetter, May 21, 2020
- “Bus Stop” in Tributaries, The Fourth River, March 28, 2018
- “My Sister Who Flew Away” in Cascadia Magazine, February 14, 2018
- “The End of Roller Skating” in Moss, Issue 08, Fall 2017
- “Lupita and the Lone Ranger” in Kweli Journal, June 2016
- “Help” in The Adirondack Review, September 1, 2015
- “First Confession” in Santa Ana Review, April 2015
- “Good Side” in Spartan, Summer 2014
- “When Danny Got Married” in Bluestem, June 2014
- “Raquel Luna’s Evening of Enchantment” in Waxwing, Summer 2014
- “Ana’s Dance” in The Lascaux Review, April 17, 2014, winner of the Lascaux Prize in Short Fiction
- “Irma the Practical” in Hawaii Pacific Review, January 30, 2014
- “Fleeing Fat Allen” in Conversations Across Borders, March 2012
A reviewer in New Pages had this to say about “Strong Girls”:
But it was Donna Miscolta’s “Strong Girls” that was so completely and utterly wonderful that it was well worth the price of the magazine on its very own. Portraying the short high school wrestling careers of overly large identical twins Ofelia and Norma, professionally known as “Oafie and Abnorma,” this story is so perfectly rendered in its tone, craft, and execution that I urge everyone to rush out and read it.
Essays
- “Mother Daughter Mother Daughter,” on the mother-daughter bond whose elasticity is forever tested in Hypertext Magazine, Fall/Winter 2023.
- “History Lesson with Mango,” about finding oneself in the history of a fruit in the Museum of Americana, Issue 31, Fall 2023.
- “What I Know About Dismemberment,” a reflection on physical characteristics I share with family members appeared in The Museum of Americana, February 28, 2023.
- “Luis Alberto Urrea, My Hometown, and Me,” on what connects me to the work of Urrea appeared in South Seattle Emerald, October 8, 2022.
- “This Is Not a Dialogue,” a response to seeing Alberto Ríos read his poem “Nani” online, appeared in Issue 24 of The Museum of Americana, June 2021.
- “A Thousand Imaginations: What the Books of Alberto Ríos Say to Each Other,” a look at the themes that echo in the many works by Ríos in Poetry Northwest, May 24, 2021.
- “Can’t You Talk, Girl?”, an essay about growing up brown appeared, in pif Magazine, June 1, 2020.
- “The Disaster I Had Been Trained to Expect Happened to My Daughter,” my brief essay about my daughter in New York City testing positive for COVID-19 appeared in McSweeney’s A Force Outside Myself series, April 17, 2020.
- “My Dead Mother,” an essay on my mother’s last days, appeared in Atticus Review in July 2019.
- “A Chinese Laborer, a Mural, Carlos Santana, and My Hometown Library,” a brief story about the library in the city where I grew up, appeared September 10, 2018 in Erin Pringle’s Summer Library Series.
- “Comings and Goings,” about a family, a beloved family member, and how life is a series of farewells, appeared in the December 2017 issue of Blood Orange Review.
- “After my grandmother died, there was no one to make the tamales,” begins the essay I wrote about the background for the stories in Hola and Goodbye. The essay appears in the Research Notes section in the November 25, 2016 issue of Necessary Fiction.
- “Gray and Naked,” an essay about me and my mother and getting older appeared in Split Lip Magazine in August 2016.
This essay is about my grandfather who was a featherweight boxing champion. The essay earned me a literary grant from 4Culture and a Pushcart Prize nomination from Raven Chronicles. “The Little Brown Man from Los Baños” in Raven Chronicles, September 2008.
Novel Excerpt
The publication of this chapter led to the publication of my novel When the De La Cruz Family Danced. My deep gratitude goes to the editors of Cha.
- “A Month in the Tropics” in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, May 2010
Book Reviews
- “Something out of place – A Chinese-Latina woman uncovers a deception of her life,” review of Why Didn’t You Tell Me by Carmen Rita Wong in International Examiner, Feb 26, 2023
- “In YA novel “Lupe Wong Won’t Dance”, a Chinese American girl is buoyed by the richness of her multiple heritages” review of Lupe Wong Won’t Dance by Donna Barba Higuera in International Examiner, May 10, 2022
- “Review: This is One Way to Dance by Sejal Shah,” Los Angeles Review, June 10, 2020
- “Still standing,” review of Take a Stand: Art Against Hate, edited by Anna Balint, Phoebe Bosché, and Thomas Hubbard in Seattle Review of Books, March 24, 2020
- “The thorny, everyday lives of Staten Islanders,” review of Staten Island Stories by Claire Jimenez, Seattle Review of Books, December 10, 2019
- “An earnest valentine,” review of The Importance of Being Wilde at Heart by R. Zamora Linmark, Seattle Review of Books, August 13, 2019
- “The borders between people,” review of Crux by Jean Guerrero and Retablos by Octavio Solis, Seattle Review of Books, February 19, 2019
- “Love is kicking our asses,” review of Love War Stories by Ivelisse Rodriguez, Seattle Review of Books, June 20, 2018
- “Trying to make sense of the border,” review of The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border by Francisco Cantú, Seattle Review of Books, April 4, 2018
- “Let us be part of the change,” review of Subversive Lives: A Family Memoir of the Marcos Years by Susan F. Quimpo and Nathan Gilbert Quimpo, Seattle Review of Books, February 28, 2018
- “Reclaiming the story of women’s bodies,” review of Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado, Seattle Review of Books, November 15, 2017
- “The language of justice,” review of Lola’s House: Filipino Women Living with War by M. Evelina Galang, Seattle Review of Books, September 27, 2017
- “Where and when history happens,” review of Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape by Lauret Savoy, Seattle Review of Books, April 12, 2017
- “The fire is in the book,” review of Fire Girl: Essays on India, America, and the In-Between by Sayantani Dasgupta, Seattle Review of Books, March 2017
- “Poetic language and fairy-tale setting lift this story of illicit love,” review of Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness by Jennifer Tseng, International Examiner, December 2016
- “Sancocho,” review of Daring to Write: Contemporary Narratives by Dominican Women, edited by Erika Martinez, Seattle Review of Books, June 2016
- Review of People Like You by Margaret Malone, Hypertext Magazine, May 2016
- Review of In the Country by Mia Alvar, Hypertext Magazine, March 2016
- “Staring across a border, looking at a wall,” review of The Border is Burning by Ito Romo, Seattle Review of Books, March 2016
- “Necktie Transcends Languages” review of I Called Him Necktie by Milena Michiko Flasar, International Examiner, August 2015
- “Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You holds a mystery, invites readers in,” review of Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, International Examiner, July 2014
Interviews
- “Author Interview: Donna Miscolta, by Penny Zang, Epilogue, February 7, 2022
- “How we spend our days: Donna Miscolta,” by Cynthia Newberry Martin, How We Spend Our Days, February 1, 2022.
- “Meet a Resident: Donna Miscolta,” by Kait Heacock, Mineral School blog, September 15, 2019
- “Donna Miscolta: The Accidental Novelist,” by Jefferson Robbins, Humanities Washington blog, September 25, 2018
- “A History of Family, Creativity, and Sisterhood: A Conversation with Author Donna Miscolta,” What She Might Think, January 4, 2018
- “Interview of Donna Miscolta by Xánath Carraza,” La Bloga, October 2016
- “Hypertext Interview with Donna Miscolta,” Hypertext Magazine, May 2016
- “Donna Miscolta Interviews Sonora Jha,” Hedgebrook blog, March 2016
- “Sonora Jha Interviews Donna Miscolta,” Hedgebrook blog, March 2016
- “#WomanCentered: Donna Miscolta,” #WomanCentered Two, March 2016
Anthologies
- “Mother, Mother, Mother, Mother, Earth” in What’s Next: Short Fiction in Time of Change, edited by Sharyn Skeeter, Green Writers Press, 2023
- “Brown” in NonWhite and Woman: 131 on Being in the World, edited by Darien Hsu Gee and Carla Crujido, Woodhall Press, 2022
- “Disaster Unpreparedness” in Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19, edited by Jennifer Haupt, Central Avenue Publishing, 2020
Other Articles
- “The Dirt on American Dirt,” Seattle Review of Books, January 2020
- “Reflecting on Race and Racism through Poetry, Spoken Word, and Conversation,” Seattle Review of Books, March 2016
- “Reflections by and about white people,” about Seattle City of Literature: Reflections from a Community of Writers, edited by Ryan Budinot, Seattle Review of Books, October 2015
