2026 Commencement Speaker
Emilly Prado
Award-winning writer, multidisciplinary artist, speaker, and educator.
Emilly Prado is an award-winning writer, multidisciplinary artist, speaker, and educator with roots in the San Francisco Bay Area and Michoacán, Mexico. She is the author of Funeral for Flaca (Future Tense Books, 2021), winner of a 2022 Pacific Northwest Book Award, a Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for Essays Bronze Medal, an International Latino Book Award Honorable Mention for Best First Book, a Finalist for the Big Other Book Award for Nonfiction, and praised by Ms. Magazine as “utterly vulnerable, bold, and unique.”
Prado’s honors include awards from the American Library Association, Regional Arts and Culture Council, Oregon Arts Commission, Seeding Justice, and Foundation for Global Scholars. She was the 2024 Ich Chuvawve Teaching Fellow at Arizona State University, a 2023 Walter E. Dakin Fellow in Nonfiction at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, a Blackburn Fellow at the Randolph College MFA, and a 2018 Emerging Journalists Community Stories Fellow (awarded in partnership with Oregon Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Pulitzer Prizes). Prado has also received residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (Amherst County, VA and Auvillar, France), Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, Caldera Arts, Caroline Moore Writers House, Guapamacátaro Center for Art and Ecology, and the Sou’wester.
Her first book, Examining Assimilation (Enslow, 2019), is a youth nonfiction book examining culture, identity, and U.S. history. Her journalism, cultural criticism, and photography have appeared in numerous national and regional publications including NPR, Marie Claire, Eater, Bitch Media, and The Oregonian.
Prado’s interdisciplinary practice moves between writing, DJing, community organizing, zines, and knowledge sharing. A well-regarded speaker, she has presented lectures, readings, workshops, and keynotes nationwide for institutions such as Texas State University, Colorado State University-Pueblo, McCormack Writing Center (FKA Tin House), Literary Arts, and elsewhere.
She is a co-founder of the Latiné DJ collective Noche Libre and the BIPOC arts nonprofit Portland in Color, initiatives dedicated to expanding access to creative community and cultural celebration. Storytelling, community, and connection are the heart of all she does. She teaches at the Pacific Northwest College of Art’s Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing and lives in Portland, Oregon. Learn more at www.emillyprado.com