Born in Miami, Joy Castro studied at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas and at Texas A&M University. An award-winning teacher, she publishes articles on innovative strategies for the post-secondary classroom, and her literary scholarship focuses on experimental women writers of the twentieth century such as Jean Rhys, Margery Latimer, Meridel Le Sueur, Sandra Cisneros, and Naomi Shihab Nye. Her honors include the Charles Gordone Award for Poetry and a Frank B. Vogel Scholarship in nonfiction at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and her short fiction, creative nonfiction, and poems appear in anthologies and in journals such as North American Review, Cream City Review, Chelsea, Quarterly West, Puerto del Sol, and the New York Times Magazine. Her critically acclaimed memoir The Truth Book ( Arcade, 2005) investigates intersections of ethnicity, gender, class, religion, violence, and the body.