Karina Muñiz-Pagán

Karina Muñiz-Pagán (she/they) is a literary translator and writer of memoir, fiction, and personal essay. She has spent over two decades anchored in organizing, cultural work, and movement-building. Awarded the Community Engagement Fellowship from Mills College in Oakland, Karina received their MFA while serving as the Political Director for Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA). A queer mixed heritage (Mexican/Swedish) Xicana teacher and writing coach, they co-founded the Latina immigrant-focused Las Malcriadas Writers Collective, editing and translating the anthology Mujeres Mágicas: Domestic Workers Right to Write (Freedom Press, 2018) and helped to expand their work with the creation of Las Malcriadas Fronterizas curating the development of the anthology Historias de Mujeres Indomables (Lulu Press, 2023). Karina is a VONA and Macondo Writers Workshop fellow and contributing author of various anthologies and online publications, such as Essential Truths: The Bay Area in Color (Pease Press, 2021).

In 2021-2022, Karina led the National Domestic Workers Alliance’s inaugural Pop Culture Worker Council, to center worker stories in TV and film. With master’s degrees in Urban Planning and Latin American Studies from UCLA, she weaves place-based and transnational stories into her writing and literary translations. She is the Strategic Partnerships Director for the Unicorn Authors Club working to build expansive narrative power for BIPOC authors and allies. Karina lives in Long Beach, CA, on unceded Tongva land, with her wife and Sato rescue pups, and is actively looking for an agent for her completed memoir From Above, the River Speaks.