Priscilla Solis Ybarra is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of North Texas, where she teaches Latinx literature and environmental humanities. For 2023-2024, she is Institute for the Advancement of the Arts Faculty Fellow at the University of North Texas, for which she is designing a project to amplify Black, Indigenous, and Latinx histories of Denton, Texas. 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. In 2020 she received the UNT President’s Council Teaching Award. In 2021, her department honored her with the Stevens Award for Outsanding Service, and in 2019 her department recognized her with the Preston Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching.
Her book Writing the Goodlife: Mexican American Literature and the Environment (University of Arizona, 2016) received the 2017 Thomas J. Lyon Award in Western American Literary and Cultural Studies. 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." Ybarra regularly offers lectures at universities, conferences, public gatherings, and online. Since 2011, Ybarra and Professor José Aranda have been organizing a group of scholars every summer at Rice University and UNT for a collaborative writing workshop and co-mentoring convening, Avanzamos: El Taller Chicana/o/x. (Since the COVID-19 pandemic, El Taller has shifted to online Zoom meetings, but we look forward to re-convening in person when public health best practices allow.)
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.
She is currently drafting her next book, 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. A Chicana Eco-Genealogy is written as a memoir of Ybarra's search for her eco-genealogy as a writer and professor, and centers her mother's life experiences as an immigrant to the U.S. from Mexico. She is also co-editing (with Gabriela Nuñez, Sarah D. Wald, and David J. Vázquez) a special themed issue of the journal Diálogo on the topic of Latinx Outdoor Recreation.
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" forthcoming in the edited collection Solastalgia: An Anthology of Emotion in a Disappearing World (University of Virginia Press). 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 dramaturg with Cara Mia Theatre’s Dallas community productions of Virginia Grise’s Your Healing is Killing Me. Ybarra also participated as project dramaturg in Grise's performance lab Da Grove: Un Taller for Dreaming in 2022. Ybarra's role in Da Grove included facilitating a conversation about Indigenous-led water walk ceremonies with Ojibwe leader, founding member and Executive Director of the Indigenous People's Task Force, and Nibi Walk leader Sharon Day along with Nibi Walker and organizer Chas Jewett titled "Every Step Is A Prayer." In 2022, Ybarra was selected to participate in the Nottingham Contemporary's and Nottingham Trent University's collaborative Five Bodies 2022: Entanglements series of workshops on creative-critical writing, hybrid methodologies, and experimental thinking. In 2020, Ybarra was selected to participate in the Understories Writers' Workshop (led by William deBuys) at the University of Oregon's Center for Environmental Futures. She was also selected to participate in allgo's This is a Manifesto! Writing Workshop led by Virginia Grise.
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. When not writing and teaching, Priscilla spends time with her family and her family of friends. They enjoy a variety of activities like live theater and music, visual art, cooking, hiking, birding, gardening, water-walking, and cruising quiet waters in origami kayaks. You can find some of Priscilla’s photography via #ChicanaBirder.
Her book Writing the Goodlife: Mexican American Literature and the Environment (University of Arizona, 2016) received the 2017 Thomas J. Lyon Award in Western American Literary and Cultural Studies. 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." Ybarra regularly offers lectures at universities, conferences, public gatherings, and online. Since 2011, Ybarra and Professor José Aranda have been organizing a group of scholars every summer at Rice University and UNT for a collaborative writing workshop and co-mentoring convening, Avanzamos: El Taller Chicana/o/x. (Since the COVID-19 pandemic, El Taller has shifted to online Zoom meetings, but we look forward to re-convening in person when public health best practices allow.)
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.
She is currently drafting her next book, 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. A Chicana Eco-Genealogy is written as a memoir of Ybarra's search for her eco-genealogy as a writer and professor, and centers her mother's life experiences as an immigrant to the U.S. from Mexico. She is also co-editing (with Gabriela Nuñez, Sarah D. Wald, and David J. Vázquez) a special themed issue of the journal Diálogo on the topic of Latinx Outdoor Recreation.
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" forthcoming in the edited collection Solastalgia: An Anthology of Emotion in a Disappearing World (University of Virginia Press). 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 dramaturg with Cara Mia Theatre’s Dallas community productions of Virginia Grise’s Your Healing is Killing Me. Ybarra also participated as project dramaturg in Grise's performance lab Da Grove: Un Taller for Dreaming in 2022. Ybarra's role in Da Grove included facilitating a conversation about Indigenous-led water walk ceremonies with Ojibwe leader, founding member and Executive Director of the Indigenous People's Task Force, and Nibi Walk leader Sharon Day along with Nibi Walker and organizer Chas Jewett titled "Every Step Is A Prayer." In 2022, Ybarra was selected to participate in the Nottingham Contemporary's and Nottingham Trent University's collaborative Five Bodies 2022: Entanglements series of workshops on creative-critical writing, hybrid methodologies, and experimental thinking. In 2020, Ybarra was selected to participate in the Understories Writers' Workshop (led by William deBuys) at the University of Oregon's Center for Environmental Futures. She was also selected to participate in allgo's This is a Manifesto! Writing Workshop led by Virginia Grise.
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. When not writing and teaching, Priscilla spends time with her family and her family of friends. They enjoy a variety of activities like live theater and music, visual art, cooking, hiking, birding, gardening, water-walking, and cruising quiet waters in origami kayaks. You can find some of Priscilla’s photography via #ChicanaBirder.