Episode 06 (+1)

Carribean Fragoza is a fiction writer and journalist from South El Monte, CA. Her collection of stories Eat the Mouth That Feeds You was published in 2021 by City Lights and was a finalist for a 2022 PEN Award. Her co-edited compilation of essays, East of East: The Making of Greater El Monte was published by Rutgers University Press and her forthcoming collection of essays Writing Home: New Terrains of California will be published by Angel City Press in 2023. She has published in Harper's Bazaar, The New York Times, Zyzzyva, Alta, BOMB, Huizache, KCET, the Los Angeles Review of Books, ArtNews, and Aperture Magazine. She is the Prose Editor at Huizache Magazine and Creative Nonfiction and Poetry Editor at Boom California, a journal of UC Press. Fragoza is the founder and co-director of South El Monte Arts Posse, an interdisciplinary arts collective. She lives in the San Gabriel Valley in Greater Los Angeles.

This is the first “plus-one” episode of Five Places Los Angeles. In each episode, we ask our interviewees to name someone whom they would choose to ask about the five places that define Los Angeles for them. Carolina Miranda, the arts and urban design columnist for the Los Angeles Times, whom we interviewed in Episode One, chose Carribean Fragoza as her plus-one. To hear Carolina Miranda’s interview and read her bio, check out her interview and show notes here.