Bio
Mariana Castro Azpíroz was born and raised in Mexico City, where she wrote a monthly column on climate change for three years and published several science communication articles in “Nexos” journal. Originally trained as a molecular biologist at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, she is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing and Environment at Iowa State University with a minor in Journalism and Mass Communication. She was a recipient of the 2023-2024 Pearl Hogrefe Fellowship and has been a research assistant in NOAA’s Central Midwest Climate Opportunities & Learning Project since May 2024.
Mariana enjoys spending time outdoors in parks and preserves and volunteering for Good Earth Student Farm, where she harvests produce to take home and donate to the ISU student food pantry (S.H.O.P.). Her work explores how language both reflects and shapes the way we understand and interact with the world, seeks to challenge it, and imagines alternative ways to reframe this narrative. Her writing uses lenses of hope, relationality, kinship, and ethics of care, and incorporates different ways of knowing. Her zine, “Caretakers’ New Dictionary,” is part of the “Climate Storytelling 2075” project, exhibited at the Queens Council on the Arts.