Meet the Moderator: Karla Yaritza Maravilla Zaragoza

Karla Yaritza Maravilla Zaragoza (she/her/ella) just completed her second year as a Ph.D. student in English and is a Joseph Gaia Distinguished Fellow in Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame. As a scholar, her passion lies in advocating for greater representation of Chican@/Latinx experiences in literature and education. As such, she is interested in conducting research through Chicana Third Space and Postcolonial critical theories to explore storytelling as a cultural resource against trauma and discrimination, assess the role of spirituality within Chican@/Latinx culture, and implement a multidirectional feminist praxis within a broad analysis of 20th/21st-century literature. Her ultimate goal is to advocate for using Curanderismo (traditional Latinx folk healing) in the U.S. public health care system to increase accessibility for lower-income families.

In addition to conducting research and writing essays, she is a Washington-based poet whose work explores illness, myth, and sacrifice detailing the experiences of migrant farmworkers in the Yakima Valley, the borderlands, and across the United States. She was the first poet featured in Poetry Northwest’s “Presenting” series for up-and-coming poets, praised for her language and aesthetic, described as “an agricultural beat, a field worker’s beat, a hot beat—[that] becomes prayer.” Her manuscript “La Casa Negra” was a 2022 semifinalist for the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize through Letras Latinas at Notre Dame. Her favorite poets are Natalie Diaz, Xavier Cavazos, and Natalie Scenters Zapico.