Extract
Myriam Gurba, photo by Geoff Cordner
Myriam K. Gurba (b. 1977) is a Chicanx writer, editor, artist, educator, and activist born in Santa Maria, California. She is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and author of the literary true crime memoir Mean (2017), for which she was a Lamba Literary Awards finalist. She is also the author of the short story collections Painting Their Portraits in Winter (2015) and Dahlia Season (2007), which won the Publishing Triangle’s Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction. Her next book, titled Creep: Accusations and Confessions, will be published by Avid Reader Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster in 2023. Gurba is co-founder, with Latinx authors David Bowles and Roberto Lovato, of the grassroots campaign #DignidadLiteraria (Literary Dignity), which seeks both greater inclusion of Chicanx and Latinx authors, editors, and executives, and to combat the exclusion and erasure of Latinx and Chicanx literature within the publishing industry in the USA. The author-activist collective was formed following Gurba’s viral review of the novel American Dirt (2018) by Jeanine Cummins.1 Her visual artwork has been exhibited at the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) and The Center, Long Beach, California. She has also written for The Guardian and Time and is the Editor-in-Chief of Tasteful Rude (published by The Brick House Cooperative).2
