Dr. Rafael Castillo teaches writing and humanities at Palo Alto College and is the Director of Publications and Special Projects for Catch the Next, Inc. He has scholarly articles, reviews, and essays published inThe Arizona Quarterly, The New Mexico Humanities Review, CCHumanities Review, English Journal, College English, English in Texas, FRANK International Journal, Oxford Bibliographies, NISOD Papers, New York Times, Hispanic Link Syndicate, and AP News. He is the author of two collections of fiction: Distant Journeys (Arizona State University) and Aurora (Floricanto Press). His collection of essays Dostoevsky on Guadalupe Street is forthcoming from Peter Lang International (Oxford) in 2023.

Castillo is one of the editors of CTN: A Journal of Pedagogy and Ideas and is member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, PEN America and the National Book Critics Circle (NY)