Monica-Ramon Rios

Mónica-Ramón Ríos is a bilingual writer from Chile and, since 2010, a guest dweller in Lenapehoking. They hold a Ph.D. in Spanish and Cinema Studies and an M.A. in Literary Theory. At Pratt, they are an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities and Media Studies. Previously, they were a faculty member in the Department of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies.

They are the author of seven books, including the essay Látigo versus luma (2022), the short story collection Autos que se queman (2022, Cars on Fire 2020), as well as the novels Alias el Rucio (2015, forthcoming in translation 2026) and Segundos (2010). Their work, which investigates displacement, identity, and the voices of survivors in the face of gender and colonial violence, has been published across the Americas in outlets such as Hyperallergic, LitHub, Palabra Pública, Granta in Spanish, and La tempestad. As a defender of fiction as a political tool, Ríos explores alternative models for human organization through their literary fiction, intermedial experimentations, speculative and experimental narratives. They also publish genre fiction under a pseudonym and write children’s books with their son.

Their academic work focuses on expanding film history archives to examine how minorities have used aesthetic practices and emerging technologies to build networks of solidarity. Their current research highlights queer and trans Latin American filmmakers. Ríos’ forthcoming book, The Spectral Archive, is a study of early Chilean women filmmakers who created queer spaces of artistic collaboration by working with the then experimental technology of film. These ephemeral yet radical spaces shifted the scripts that regulated society at large. The book reconstructs the production and circulation of the now-lost films of Gabriela Bussenius and Rosario Rodríguez, using tools and strategies of literary fiction to navigate the gaps in archives. Engaging with Gabriela Mistral’s Poem of Chile, Giuliana Bruno’s intertextual archaeology, and Saidiya Hartman’s critical fabulations, Ríos offers a method of inquiry into forgotten histories of resistance and solidarity among minoritized subjects. By analyzing traces and archival errors, the book uncovers how these filmmakers used pseudonyms, crossdressing, femme fatales, and melodrama as tactics to create cinematic spaces not yet colonized by male-nationalist-white elites. In doing so, The Spectral Archive models a counterhistory of aesthetic production and traces an alternative ethics of collective artistic creation. Based on their doctoral dissertation, Ríos currently collaborates with Chilean feminist researchers to develop a theoretical and poetic language that better describes a film history based on collective actions.

Ríos’ publications also include the chapbook La noche valpúrgica (2019) and the edited volumes The US without US (2016), a collection of texts by Latine writers against Trump, and Literaturas y feminismos (2022), a collection of essays by Latina and Latin American writers in New York.

As an organizer, Ríos has led writing workshops exploring diverse mythologies and their intersections with popular genres such as fantasy, romance, and melodrama. They have also organized encuentros that bridge Latin American and New York literary communities (Afest, 2017). Ríos is the co-creator and co-editor of Sangría Editora, a collective home for radical voices founded in 2008, and the co-host of The Letter podcast, which creatively investigates the Latine and Latin American literary and artistic community in the US. Their creative work extends to performance and installation, including A Story of the World When It is Over (2012),  Una maleta blanca (2016), Paper Boat Apocalypse (2017), a choral reading, and the installations associated with Máquina Espía (ongoing).

Their research and creative work have been supported by numerous fellowships and awards, including the NYSCA Artist Award, Juegos Literarios Gabriela Mistral, the Award for Essays in the Humanities in Chile, as well as grants from the Mellon Foundation and the Comisión Chilena de Ciencia y Tecnología for their Doctoral and Maters studies.

They are currently writing their first novel in English, Journey to the Land of Men, which reimagines migration from Latin America as a heroic journey, and developing Máquina Espía, a multimedia novel that tells the story of the writer-artist Legión to propose literature as a weapon against surveillance. At Pratt Institute, they teach courses in creative writing, film theory, and gender and sexuality studies.

Find Ríos in the course catalog with the name Pratt prefers to identify them: Monica Rios Vasquez.