Juana Moriel-Payne is a historian, novelist, and poet. She has published two novels in Spanish that received literary prizes in Mexico and in the United States, Trigueña (Instituto Chihuahuense de la Cultura, 2013) and La caza del venado (Pukiyari Editores, 2016), and is the author of Drama Under the Skin: Baroque Catholicism in Northern New Spain (Texas Tech University Press, 2024). She is a professor at Mount Saint Mary´s University-Los Angeles, where she teaches Latin America, Latinx, Afro-Latinx, and Bordex creative studies. Currently, she is writing a memoir titled “The Girl in the Darkness.” Her research focuses on cultural history in Northern New Spain. www.moriel-payne.com