Rowena Alegría is Chief Storyteller for the City & County of Denver, founder and director of the Denver Office of Storytelling, a citywide storytelling and cultural preservation project. She was the 2021 Ricardo Salinas Scholar in Fiction at Aspen Words and is the recipient of fellowships and residencies from Ragdale, Vermont Studio Center, Storyknife, Writing by Writers and Jack Jones Literary Arts. She earned an MFA in Fiction from the Institute of American Indian Arts and is a member of Sandra Cisneros’ Macondo Writers Workshop. Her work has appeared in publications including The Rumpus, the Mississippi Review, the Hennepin Review and We Are the West: Tributaries anthology. A filmmaker, career journalist, communications executive and speech writer, she is writing a novel that plays with form and the history of the Southwest. She was adopted and raised in Denver.