is an educator with a Masters in Education and a Masters of Fine Arts, a public speaker, and an award-winning storyteller. They create works of art with preschool, elementary, middle school, and high school students. They believe art-visual, dramatic, and written, is a powerful way children can have autonomy over their present and design their future.

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They wrote THE DISTURBED GIRL’S DICTIONARY, a 2018 New York Public Library Best Book for Teens, a 2019 YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Selection, and a 2019 In the Margins Award Top Ten pick. It earned starred reviews from Booklist, Voya, and Foreword.

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Their debut picture book YOUR MAMA illustrated by Jacqueline Alcántara earned starred reviews from Booklist, School Library Journal, and Kirkus.  The Virginia Center for the Book selected YOUR MAMA as Virginia’s GREAT READ for 2021 highlighted by the Library of Congress’ Center for the Book at the National Book Festival. YOUR MAMA won a Nerdy Book  Club Award, was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, a School Library Journal Best Picture Book of 2021, a Kirkus Best Picture Book of the 2021, a Bank Street Books Best Book of 2021, a 2022 ALA Rise Feminist Book Selection, and a National Council of English Books Notable Poetry Book.

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Their pb BEAUTY WOKE illustrated by Paola Escobar, earned starred reviews from Booklist and Kirkus, was a Kirkus Best Book of 2022, a Chicago Public Library and New York Public Library Best Book of 2022, and was a Bank Street Best Children's Book of 2023. 

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In 2024, NoNieqa will release the YA novel THEY THOUGHT THEY BURIED US with Lerner Books, a queer retelling of THE RAVEN called EVERMORE in a SFF YA anthology with Inkyard Press (RELIT: 16 LATINX REMIXES OF CLASSIC STORIES),  a short story called CRESCENT DANCES with the STARS in an MG anthology with Penguin  and their first picture book bio, THE TRES HERMANAS: A SISTERHOOD of the COMMON GOOD. 

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NoNieqa is a proud member of Las Musas Books collective and the Soaring 20s PB debut group. They live with their familia in Virginia in a plantopia of books, art, and Legos.