Joy Castro is the author of seven books: the memoir The Truth Book (2005); the literary thrillers Hell or High Water (2012), Nearer Home (2013), and Flight Risk (2021); the essay collection Island of Bones (2013); the short story collection How Winter Began (2015); and the forthcoming historical novel One Brilliant Flame (2023). She edited Family Trouble: Memoirists on the Hazards and Rewards of Revealing Family (2013), co-edited special issues of Brevity on gender and race, and serves as the founding series editor of Machete, a nonfiction series at The Ohio State University Press. A former Writer in Residence at Vanderbilt University, she is the Willa Cather Professor of English and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, where she directs the Institute for Ethnic Studies and teaches creative writing, literature, and Latinx studies.