A Macondo fellow, Margaret Elysia Garcia is the author of the poetry collections Iconistas! (Lit Kit Collective, 2025), the daughterland poems (El Martillo Press, 2023), and Burn Scars, (Lit Kit Collective, 2022). She is the author of the short story collection Graft (Tolsun Books, 2022), and the forth coming collection Chicana Noir: Stories (El Martillo Press, 2026). She’s the co-editor of the forthcoming Red Flag Warning: Mutual Aid and Community in California’s Fire Country, (AK Press, June 2025). She’s been awarded a non-tuition fellowship to work on her novel through Chapman University in Orange, CA.

Margaret’s is the recipient of multiple Pushcart nominations, 2nd place winner in the 34th Annual National Chicana/Latina Literary Award, University of California, Irvine, Solstice Literary Press Award (ebook), a California Arts Council grant recipient, Chapman University’s non-tuition fellowship grantee, participant in Disquiet International, Community of Writers, and Black Rock Mountain Artist Residency. Her story collection Graft was a recommended read at Small Press Distribution November 2022. She teaches English as a second language with Santa Ana College.

Engaging the World: Leading the Conversation on the Environment and Building Resilient Futures is a series that explores how natural, social, and political climates both shape and are changed by institutions and social structures. We engage with artists, educators, activists and authors to examine where we live and how we live in our surrounding environment and what it takes to build a resilient future.

Guest: Margaret Elysia Garcia
Host: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by Past Forward in partnership with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University.
Date recorded: November 12, 2025

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