Emilly Prado

Emilly Prado is a writer, DJ, and educator living in Portland, Oregon with roots in the San Francisco Bay Area and Michoacán, Mexico. She is the author of Funeral for Flaca (Future Tense Books, 2021), an essay collection called, “Utterly vulnerable, bold, and unique,” by Ms. Magazine and a winner of a 2022 Pacific Northwest Book Award, a 2021 bronze winner of the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in Essays, and several other honors. She is also the author of Examining Assimilation (Enslow, 2019), a youth non-fiction book at the intersections of identity and U.S. history. As journalist and cultural critic, Emilly has covered a wide range of topics, most often centered on amplifying the voices and experiences of people from historically marginalized communities. Her writing and photographs have appeared in more than 30 publications including NPR, Marie Claire, Bitch Media, Eater, Oxygen, and The Oregonian. She has received fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the 2018 Emerging Journalists Community Stories Fellowship (presented by Oregon Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Pulitzer Prizes), and the Randolph College MFA. Emilly is a Tin House and Las Dos Brujas Workshop alum, previous writer-in-residence at the Vermont Studio Center, Guapamacátaro, and Sou’Wester, and is a co-founder of BIPOC arts non-profit Portland in Color.

Emilly has worked with students of all ages in settings such as public high schools, universities, MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility, and literary organizations including Tin House, Lighthouse, Corporeal Writing, Literary Arts, and the Independent Publishing Resource Center. Her goal as an educator is to foster learning environments that are safe, inclusive, and ultimately conducive to questioning, wondering, discussing, analyzing, accountability, and curiosity. She embraces the challenge of attempting to create meaningful connections with every student and seeks co-creation in developing a wider classroom community that is welcoming. She enters each space with the belief that educators must employ as many creative, engaging anti-racist teaching modalities as possible to support student learning. Historical and ongoing systemic oppression shapes every facet of life, and in addition to examining individual teaching strategies, it’s imperative to zoom out to consider how wider social structures, institutions, privilege, and access impact learning environments. Ultimately, Emilly seeks to be a lifelong champion of her students, and a lifelong learner alongside them. When not writing or teaching, Emilly moonlights as DJ Mami Miami with Noche Libre, the Latine DJ collective she co-founded in 2017.