About

“A monach of the short form” - Vi Khi Nao, author of The Italy Letters

Diana Oropeza is a writer and performer based in Portland, OR, whose interdisciplinary work spans poetry, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, and spoken word. She earned a BA in Media Studies from UC Berkeley, where she concentrated on journalism. She completed the Certificate in Poetry program at the Independent Publishing Resource Center, where she self-published Origin Story, a chapbook exploring identity, mythology, and migration through the lens of insects.

She went on to earn an MFA in Creative Writing from the Pacific Northwest College of Art at Willamette University. Her manuscript An Incomplete Catalog of Disappearance (Future Tense, 2024) won the program’s Thesis Award and is now taught at the University of Denver’s undergraduate course, “Contemporary Novels.” Oropeza’s work has appeared in Willamette Magazine, River Styx, and Not My Style, and has been reviewed in Rain Taxi, Full Stop, and SmokeLong Quarterly.

Oropeza co-founded The Social Stomach, an experimental music and spoken word project that offers an alternative to traditional poetry readings, with composer and drummer TJ Thompson. The project continues to perform nationally, with recordings released on Crash Symbols and Bento Records. She is also a core member of Yelling Choir, a somatic vocal ensemble led by musicologist Maxx Katz.