I am a writer, ceramic artist, audio journalist, educator and death doula based in New Orleans.

Barro y Luna is my trauma-informed art and death care practice; I use clay and storytelling as healing mediums, and record elders’ oral histories to preserve community legacies. My award-winning podcast studio, Pizza Shark, strives for radical inclusivity in media.

I arrived at ceramics and death work after years of reporting on immigration, criminal justice and abolitionist practices within carceral systems forced me to confront my own traumas. I studied clinical traumatology with the Trauma Research Foundation and have since advocated for trauma-informed training for all journalists.

This ethos informed my work developing and leading Spotify’s inaugural Latinx Sound Up training program and teaching with CUNY’s Newmark School of Journalism Spanish-language master's program, Lede New Orleans and Propeller New Orleans.

For the first decade of my career, I worked as an editor, reporter and producer in newspapers, public media, alt weeklies and digital media — locally in South Florida, then nationally and internationally from New England. I was the first full-time female craft beer reporter in South Florida, and later covered street art during the boom of Miami’s developer-led Wynwood Arts District. Through it all, I covered immigration as a first-generation Peruvian immigrant myself. 

I was born and raised in Lima, Peru, and have bylines in English and Spanish across the US and internationally. I went to high school in Miami and settled in New Orleans for its marriage of Lima’s stormy colonial past and Miami’s tropical surrealness. My dream is to move to a farm with a Scottish highland cow and everyone I love.