What was the creation process like for “Waru Waru”? Are there any aspects of backstory or inspiration that you’d like to highlight here?

When I first read about the Andean agricultural practice waru waru, I knew I wanted to write a story that incorporated it, but I wasn’t sure how. It kicked around in the back of my brain for a couple years, trying to attach itself to some kind of story, until something terrible happened: My aunt had a stroke. A series of strokes, actually, that have gradually stripped her of most memory, speech, and mobility. Suddenly, all the plans we had for diving into our family history and recording our conversations were put on pause, and as her condition has worsened, I’ve had to come to terms with her impending death and what it means to lose access to all those stories, all that ancestral history. This story is my way of processing that grief.

None of the details in the story map onto my family or my life—other than the general situation of a queer Bolivian American woman dealing with a family member’s decline—but in a deeper sense it is all true: the unexpected fears, the panic, the grasping for connections that are already slipping away from you. It was an incredibly difficult story to write as a result.

Familial relationships, both close and estranged, play a central role to this story. Can you talk about how these characters and their interpersonal dynamics came into being? How did you balance who gets time on the page and how much time to spend in the present moment vs personal history vs ancestral memory?

I sat down to write knowing that a woman would be eating her abuela’s memories and nothing else about the family dynamics. Once I had written the first paragraph, I realized some decisions had already made themselves. If the ritual is meant to be passed from generation to generation, then why would it skip the mother, and if she’s gone then why isn’t there hope of her coming back?

I could have unmade these decisions, of course, but following my intuition led me to this scenario where Blanca is under extraordinary pressure and becoming a different person even in the process of telling the story. That was a really demanding task for me to navigate as a writer. How to honor the Blanca that was, in all her youth and anxiety, with the version of Blanca who narrates the story and has access to all this additional knowledge? And how to triangulate those two versions of Blanca with her family members to get a clearer picture of each?

It’s easy, when writing from the POV of the youngest family member, to accidentally flatten older generations by virtue of the POV character’s limited knowledge. I wanted each memory to unfold in such a way as to make the mother and grandmother progressively more complex and to undo Blanca’s preconceptions about them.

If you were to write more about Blanca’s journey, where would the ancestral memories take her, both into the past and into her future? Who else would we meet?

This is such a fascinating question! I think the story itself asks the question I would want to explore: How does Blanca manage to pass down her memories? It’s something queer people have to think about, especially as they age. Who will carry on their legacy if they don’t have (or want) children? I suspect the answer for Blanca will be found family, but I haven’t written that yet.

If people liked this story, what would you recommend they check out next?

I would love it if this story was the impetus for readers to reach out to family members they’ve been meaning to spend more time with and ask them about their lives. Get those family stories now, because you never know how much time you actually have left with someone.

What have you been working on lately? Do you have any recent or forthcoming publications you’d like to announce? Anything you’re excited to share?

I’m blessed to have a very busy 2026 in terms of publishing. I have pieces out or forthcoming in Lightspeed, Adi, Pleiades, khōréō, Adventitious, Bourbon Penn, Flash Frog, Fractured Lit, Vast Chasm, and matchbook, and I have a flash chapbook called Lies I Tell My Children coming out from Bottlecap Press. I’m not sure how I got so lucky!