Amaris Castillo

Amaris Castillo is an award-winning journalist, writer, and the creator of Bodega Stories, a series featuring real stories from the corner store. Born in Brooklyn, New York to Dominican parents, she credits the many tales she heard growing up to her love of storytelling.

Her creative writing has appeared in La Galería Magazine, Aster(ix) Journal, PALABRITAS, Dominican Moms Be Like… (part of the Dominican Writers Association’s #DWACuenticos chapbook series), and she has short stories published in Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology and Sana, Sana: Latinx Pain and Radical Visions for Healing and Justice. Amaris was a prize finalist for the 2022 Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writers’ Prize by the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival, and longlisted for the same prize in 2021.

Amaris has received mentorships from the Periplus Collective, Las Musas, Kweli Journal, and Latinx in Publishing, and in 2023 received a Walter Dean Myers Grant from We Need Diverse Books. She is passionate about supporting authors’ stories and has reviewed books and interviewed creators for the Dominican Writers Association and Latinx in Publishing.

In the journalism world, Amaris has reported for The New York Times, the Lowell Sun, the Bradenton Herald, Remezcla, Latina Magazine, Parents Latina Magazine, and elsewhere. In 2018 she was named New England Journalism’s Newsroom Rising Star by the New England Society of News Editors.

Amaris earned a B.A. in journalism from the University of South Florida and an M.S. in journalism from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. She works at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies where she is a contributor to Poynter.org and a research/writing assistant for the NPR Public Editor’s Office. She lives with her family in Florida.

Visit Amaris online at www.amariscastillo.com, on X @AmarisCastillo, or on Instagram @amariswriter.