Creative Writing Lab: Experiment with Words

Despite having grown up surrounded by books, Mexican writer Karen Villeda had a lot of difficulty learning to read. Her mother patiently taught her and, before long, she was reading pirate stories by herself, and at just 19, she published her first book. Karen believes that literary genres are interchangeable and can be combined, which is why she considers her writing to be a hybrid.

She has had more than ten books published, and her book Dodo (Fondo Editorial Tierra Adentro) won the Premio Nacional de Poesía Joven Elías Nandino in 2013 and is part of the Archivo de Literatura Hispánica en Audio. Karen's work has earned her more than fifteen prizes and she has also been writer-in-residence in the University of Iowa. She is currently an editor and gives classes in creative writing.