“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.
“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
Can one be enchanted by a book titled The Age of Disenchantments? I don’t remember what led me to this book, that is, what led me to the story of the poet Leopoldo Panero, but whoa, am I glad I encountered it because it riveted me. The prologue begins with the death of Federico García Lorca on a moonless night, an irony given how the moon was a motif in so much of Lorca’s poetry. It’s a preview of the…
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.”