Ella deCastro Baron (she/siya/we) is a second generation Filipina American born and raised in Coastal Miwok territory (Vallejo, CA). She is a VONA alum; holds an MFA in Creative Writing; teaches Composition and Creative Writing at San Diego City College, S.D. Mesa College, U Mass Global; and co-facilitates “Where We Come From: Writing Your Ethnoautobiography” and “To Exist Is to Flare: Loving Our Chronically Ill Minds and Bodies” through Urban Haiku. She is also a mycelial 2024 Mushroom School cohort leader with Corporeal Writing. Ella’s first book of creative nonfiction is Itchy, Brown Girl Seeks Employment and she’s published in Nonwhite and Woman, (Her)oics: Women’s Lived Experiences During the Coronavirus Epidemic, Anomaly magazine, Rumpus, Sunshine/Noir: Writing from San Diego and Tijuana, Sunshine/Noir II: Writing from San Diego and Tijuana, and Sunshine/Noir III: Writing from San Diego and Tijuana (all from City Works Press), and more. As a woman of color who lives with chronic dis-ease, Ella honors sensations, images, story, dance, and decolonial truth-telling. She produces workshops and kapwa (deep interconnection) gatherings that stir love and justice via writing, art, joy, grief-tending, movement, food (yes!) and community. She lives and loves on Kumeyaay territory (San Diego, CA) with her husband and interracial family. Her favorite pronoun, more than ever, is We.