Marco Avilés is a Quechua-Peruvian writer and journalist. His recent work explores race and racism across the Americas. He is the author of three non-fiction books: Día de visita, a reportage about love in a women’s prison in Lima; De dónde venimos los cholos, an exploration on identity and migration in the Andes and Amazonia; and No soy tu cholo, a personal essay on being brown.
He started his career as a reporter for El Comercio, in Lima; and was editor in chief at Etiqueta Negra, an awarded magazine that promoted long form journalism in Spanish. He contributes with different media outlets such as The Washington Post, Radio Ambulante, and Ojo Público.
As a consultant, he has designed courses on communications and diversity for the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas (University of Texas at Austin), the European Union, and the World Bank, among other organizations.
He holds an M.A. in Literature from the University of Pennsylvania, where he is currently a PhD student. Marco lives in Philadelphia along with his wife and two dogs.