ABOUT
"Carrillo evokes the wonder and confusion of first love in his debut YA novel."
-Kirkus Reviews
"Dominic Carrillo lets us imagine—through his thoughtfully rendered teenage narrators—what an individual life means, and how much each one matters.”
—Rachel DeWoskin, award-winning author of 'Someday We Will Fly'
"Nia and the Dealer is a beautiful story. Bravo, Dominic Carrillo. Keep stories like this coming, not just for young adults but for all of us.”
-ReadersFavorite.com
Dominic Carrillo is a teacher and award-winning writer from San Diego, California. Dominic earned both his bachelor and master's degrees from UCLA, where he began creative writing. His stories in San Diego Reader magazine led him to publish his first novel To Be Frank Diego (2012).
Since the publication of The Improbable Rise of Paco Jones (winner of the SDBA for best YA, 2017) Dominic has focused on writing young adult novels with universal coming-of-age themes. The Unusual Suspects (SDBA winner & IAN Book Award finalist) was released in 2018 and translated into Bulgarian soon after. His short story "Ghetto is Not an Adjective" is featured in the YA collection Living Beyond Borders (Penguin 2021). His latest YA novel, Acts of Resistance (Santa Monica Press 2023), is based on the true story of how 50,000 Bulgarian Jews were saved from the Holocaust.
Dominic speaks at library events, schools, and conferences. He lives and works in Sofia, Bulgaria and is working on his next YA novel.