Eva Recinos is an arts and culture journalist, educator, and creative nonfiction writer based in Los Angeles. Her essay collection, Underneath the Palm Trees, is forthcoming in 2027 from Northwestern University Press. She is a winner of a 2025 Rabkin Prize. You can read her full bio here. 

We invited Eva to have a conversation about her work. The interview is accompanied by a newly commissioned portrait of Eva in her home office in Los Angeles. 

The interview has been gently edited for length and clarity.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Mellon Foundation – Poet StoryLabNarrative, Community, and the Transformative Possibilities of Brown Storytelling at Whittier College

• Carolina Miranda

• KCRW’s Art Insider

• Image Magazine

• LA Public Press

• Writer and brand strategist Tasbeeh Herwees

• Fred Eversley at David Kordansky Gallery

• Mona Lisa Smile movie, directed by Mike Newell (Sony Pictures, 2003)

• Too Much and Not the Mood: Essays by Durga Chew-Bose (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) 2017)

This episode of the Rabkin Interviews was produced by the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, an artist-endowed foundation based in Portland, Maine. The interview was conducted by Mary Louise Schumacher, a journalist and the executive director of the Rabkin Foundation. The portraits were made by artist-photographer Kevin J. Miyazaki. The production team for the Rabkin Interviews also includes Cindy Eggert Johnson, producer; Johnathon Olsen, editor; with research and copyediting by Katie Avila Loughmiller and Karen Samelson. Music is by Flint, HaHaHa, Yarin Primak, and Out of Flux. The Rabkin Prize is awarded through a nomination process, and an independent jury selects the winners.