Priscilla Solis Ybarra is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of North Texas, where she teaches Chicanx literature and environmental humanities. In 2020 she was selected for the UNT President’s Council Teaching Award. Her book Writing the Goodlife: Mexican American Literature and the Environment (University of Arizona, 2016) was chosen for the 2017 Thomas J. Lyon Award in Western American Literary and Cultural Studies. Environmental journalist Yvette Cabrera engages with Writing the Goodlife in this recent 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. She regularly offers lectures at universities, public gatherings, and online.
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. In 2020, she was appointed to the Editorial Advisory Board for the journal ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. At UNT, she served on the Advisory Board for Latina/o and Mexican American Studies, on the Executive Committee for Women’s and Gender Studies, and as Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of English.
Her current book project concerns the Mexican American and environmental legacy of the Aldo and Estella Leopold family in the context of coloniality, capital, and white supremacy. 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 is working as project dramaturg with Cara Mia Theatre’s Dallas community productions of Virginia Grise’s Your Healing is Killing Me. Her essay “a farm for meme, a farm for my mother” about Grise’s online play a farm for meme appears on HowlRound Theatre Commons. She has essays forthcoming in the edited collection First and Wildest: the Gila Wilderness at 100 titled “The Idea of Wilderness to Mexican Americans” and in the ASAP/Journal’s Forum on “Becoming Undisciplined” titled “Burn It All Down.”
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 and the legacies of her Mexican immigrant mother and her Mexican American father. In addition to writing, teaching, and creating community, Priscilla enjoys live theater and music, visual art, cooking, hiking, and cruising quiet waters in her kayak Clara. You can find some of her photography via #ChicanaBirder.