FIND some of my work here:
+Subo and Baon: A Memoir in Bites (City Works Press, 2024). In Subo and Baon: A Memoir in Bites, Ella deCastro Baron invites us to a communal meal, a roundtable collection of creative nonfiction. The subo (handfed bites) and baon (food to go) she serves are kitchen counter-stories marinated in Filipino American identity, faith, family, chronic illness, and the complex fullness of being, becoming. Here, ancestors and more-than-human kin conspire, too. This is kapwa, deep interconnection. May those who partake in Ella’s generous offerings savor, metabolize, and be fed by core Filipino values that infuse flavor and sustenance into American culture.
+“A Checklist for Dark S[kin] Care” (with audio & collage art) included in a BIPOC folio, “Future Possible” at ANMLY magazine edited by Jen Soong. This piece is inspired by Black women authors and activitist who call us to root ourselves in our lived realities while we imagine & dream the world we want and need for the most vulnerable among us.
+I have a dagli (a Filipino form, a ‘flash’ story) included in Nonwhite and Woman: 131 Micro Essays on Being in the World, edited by Darien Hsu Gee and Carla Crujido.
My piece is called, “A dagli for the friend who emailed 10K words—in ascending [dis]order—a one way patronizing yelling match, of why Trump is God’s savior for “we the sheeple” and why, as a fellow Christian, I *must* agree…”
Nonwhite and Woman celebrates how women of color live and thrive in the world, and how they make their lives their own. The anthology’s title is from Lucille Clifton’s luminous poem, won’t you celebrate with me, which serves as the anthology’s epigraph.
+“The Magic is Not the Cure” written by Chris Baron + moi. I contributed a few ‘graphs in this piece on an educational resource site for kids’ lit, A Novel Mind. (They reference 1000+ books that “touch on neurodiversity and mental health issues.” Chris’ latest, The Magical Imperfect, is one!) Chris’ middle grade novel-in-verse is centered on two kids who experience mental health challenges. For me, living with eczema–as others with various chronic illnesses know know–it often cascades into secondary dis-eases like depression, insomnia, and anxiety.
+My personal essay is about Filipinx American nurses (my family too), “Bahala Na” in the anthology. Purchase & support here: (Her)oics: Women’s Lived Experiences During the Coronavirus Pandemic. I’m honored and inspired by these 52 true Pandemic stories from across the United States.
+“Ghost Story,” “Purple Hearts,” and “Quantum Table” in a special BIPOC folio, “Citizenship and its Discontents” at ANMLY magazine edited by Grace Loh Prasad. Prose pieces (Creative Nonfiction) about my Papa, ube, broken hearts, and the Shabbat table.
+Review of Barbara Jane Reyes’ Letters to a Young Brown Girl in The Halo-Halo Review. This is Barbara Jane Reyes’ sixth book of Pinay poetry. Her “…[brown] body of work is consistently interrogative, liminal, daring, textured, and wholly satisfying—of mind, body, and spirit. She also gets down, honoring the intrinsic musicality of words like a DJ in a night club, a mixologist of language that warms my insides and zaps me alive.”
+”Aswang as a Second Language” in The Rumpus. On the monsters of chronic illness, religion, #metoo. 
+”Following Water” in Last Exit magazine. A creative nonfiction piece about my near death experience in Yosemite.
BOOKS (authored, edited):
Itchy Brown Girl Seeks Employment is an ironic Curriculum Vitae where life and work experiences one wouldn’t want a potential employer to know are highlighted using vulnerability, wit, observation, and candor. Ella deCastro Baron a first generation Asian American woman challenged by her parents’ faith, inherited sickness, and questionable life choices shares of beginning and ending relationships, restlessness, miracles, prejudice, entitlement, and community. She leaves it up to the reader to decide, after assessing her background, education, professional experience, fieldwork, high (and low) achievements, if she is someone worth investing in. Itchy Brown Girl Seeks Employment was a finalist for the San Diego Books Awards.
Hunger and Thirst: Food Literature,
Edited by Nancy Cary, Ella deCastro Baron, June Cressy, and Alys Masek, and Trissy McGhee
More than eighty contributors offer up unique views of food and drink, what we hunger for, what pains us, what sustains us, what brings us joy as individuals, as families, as a culture. This collection of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and art invites you to sit at the collective table that we share as the human community.
Co-editor, From Glory to Glory: An Anthology of Poetry in the Cathedral (Vol. 1) 2012
Editorial Assistant, Fiction International, Anthology 2001-2003 Other Anthology Contributions:
“Transubstantiation,” poetry, Sunshine/Noir II, Oct 2015
“Entropy,” creative nonfiction, Mamas and Papas, On the Sublime and Heartbreaking Art of Parenting 2010
“Sheddings,” collaborative creative nonfiction, Lavanderia, a Mixed Load of Women, Wash and Words 2009
“weather forecast,” poem, Sunshine/Noir 2005
“Kaua’i,” creative nonfiction and “Psalm 139,” plundered art piece, Fiction International #37 2005
+Featured Local Writer, creative nonfiction, CityWorks Journal 2010
+Various poems, CityWorks Journal 2004, 2005, 2007, 2010, 2018, 2021