Priscilla Ybarra

Specialization:

Chicanx literary history, Chicanx and Latinx environmentalisms, abolition environmentalism, decolonial theory, climate justice, Chicana spirituality, feminist and queer theory, Latinx outdoor recreation

Education:

University of North Texas, B.A. English; Rice University, M.A. and Ph.D., English

Awards:

2017 Thomas J. Lyon Award in Western American Literature

2022 Modern Language Association Prize for an Edited Collection

Biography: 

Ybarra’s book Writing the Goodlife: Mexican American Literature and the Environment (University of Arizona, 2016) is the first literary history of Mexican American environmental writing. Environmental journalist Yvette Cabrera engages with Writing the Goodlife in this 2020 article on Grist, “Planting Seeds: When It Comes to Sustainability, the Path Forward Might Mean Looking Back.” Ybarra is also co-editor of Latinx Environmentalisms: Place, Justice, and the Decolonial (Temple University Press, 2019), a collection of innovative scholarly essays and groundbreaking interviews with Latinx writers. Latinx Environmentalisms was awarded the 2022 Modern Language Association Prize for an Edited Collection, and the award committee called the book "a must for scholars interested in environmental studies, ecocriticism, and decolonization."

She is Founder and Director of the Audacious Creativity for Climate Justice workshop and retreat. ACCJ is a gathering of Indigenous women and women of color who write and organize toward climate justice. The inaugural retreat took place in May/June 2025 with 13 participants, including two facilitators and a production assistant, at The Acreage, a retreat center in Osceola, Wisconsin. All 13 participants are writers and organizers. The retreat is made possible by support from the Kalliopeia Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Indigenous People's Task Force, and The Acreage.
 
She is currently drafting her next book, OUT(side) BROWN QUEER: An Emotional Geography from the Edge of the Continent, a memoir of a transformational season in Ybarra's life in which she reckons with upswells from her personal past and writes toward strategic solidarities with Native land rematriation and Black abolitionist movements. Ybarra is also in the process of writing Brown and Green: A Chicana Eco-Genealogy, which concerns her search for the little-known history of Mexican American and Chicana ecological knowledge caretakers. Ybarra profiles seven ecologists, teachers, and  writers working through the early twentieth century. Brown and Green: A Chicana Eco-Genealogy also centers her mother's life experiences as an immigrant to the U.S. from Mexico and her father's experiences as a Mexican American who grew up as a farm worker during the Great Depression. She is also co-editing (with Gabriela Nuñez, Sarah D. Wald, David J. Vázquez, and Moe Gamez) a special themed issue of the journal Diálogo on the topic of Latinx Outdoor Recreation, slated for publication in Summer 2026.

She recently published an essay in the minnesota review in November 2024 titled "Steps toward Kinship: Chicana Indigeneity, Multispecies Justice, and the Nibi Walk." Her co-authored essay with Sarah D. Wald was just published in American Quarterly in March 2025 and is titled "Abolish or Abolition Environmentalism?: A Conversation." Ybarra's essay titled “The Idea of Wilderness to Mexican Americans,” was published in the High Country News and in the edited collection First and Wildest: the Gila Wilderness at 100 (Torrey House 2022) and her essay "Burn It All Down, or, Undisciplining Toward Just Reciprocities" was published in the ASAP/Journal’s Forum on “Becoming Undisciplined" in January 2022 (Volume 7, Issue 1). She also contributed a short essay to the December 2022 "Critics Page" of The Brooklyn Rail titled "Wondering Around." She has an essay titled "Affirming Abundance" in the edited collection Solastalgia: An Anthology of Emotion in a Disappearing World (University of Virginia Press 2023). Ybarra's essay “a farm for meme, a farm for my mother” about Grise’s online play a farm for meme appears on HowlRound Theatre Commons. Her annotated list of recommended books by Mexican American writers on environmental issues appears on the Orion blog, and an excerpt of her interview with Cherríe Moraga, “The Land Has Memory,”  is published in Orion Magazine’s Winter 2019 issue.

During Summer 2021, Ybarra served as project dramaturge with Cara Mia Theatre’s Dallas community productions of Virginia Grise’s Your Healing is Killing Me. Ybarra also participated as project dramaturge in Grise's performance lab Da Grove: Un Taller for Dreaming in 2022. Ybarra is now a resident dramaturge at A Todo Dar Productions, whose co-founding members are Grise and Maricella Z. Infante.
 
Recent projects and appointments include Palimpsest Denton, a project to amplify Black, Indigenous, and Latinx histories of Denton, Texas. Palimpsest Denton included her students' public performances of local history and a gallery exhibition documenting the performances. For 2021-2022 she was the Clements Senior Fellow for the Study of Southwestern America at the SMU Clements Center for Southwest Studies. She was also one of the 20 individuals selected for the inaugural 2021-2022 class of the Rethink Outside Fellowship, which elevates and supports leaders and storytellers who transform the outdoor equity narrative.

She has been elected to serve terms on the Executive Council of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, on the Executive Committee of the Western Literature Association, and on the Board of Directors for Orion Magazine. She also currently serves on the Board of Directors for Terra Advocati, a San Antonio, Texas-based non-profit that cultivates a world that honors the environment and champions the autonomy of all individuals. From 2020-2025, she served on the Editorial Advisory Board for the journal ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment.

Born in Dallas and raised in Johnson County, Ybarra continues a long-standing relationship with the lands of the Wichita and Caddo Affiliated Tribes and works to honor the ancestors past and present alongside the legacies of her Mexican immigrant mother and her Mexican American father. She currently resides on Chumash lands and is in the process of learning more about the histories and cultures in Santa Barbara and Goleta, California. When not writing and teaching, Priscilla spends time with her family and her family of friends. They enjoy a variety of activities like cooking, hiking, birding, water-walking, live theater and music, visual art, traveling, and cruising quiet waters in origami kayaks. You can find some of Priscilla’s photography via #ChicanaBirder.