Publications

Poems

“Future and History.” Tap into Poetry, #29, https://tapintopoetry.wordpress.com/2026/07/20/tap-into-poetry-29/

“Vaquita.” Rabble Review, forthcoming.

“The Panting Dog.” Rabble Review, Vol. 10, 2026, https://heyzine.com/flip-book/4365f8884f.html#page/84 

“Monument.” A Year in Ink, Vol. 19, 2026.

“Theater of Suburban Garages in my Evening Walks.” San Diego Poetry Annual, 2025-2026.

“Beauty and the Interloper.” The Santa Clara Review, 2026.

“Flames Are No Help.” The Broken Spine, 2025. https://thebrokenspine.co.uk/product/selected-poetry-spring-2025-digital/

“To the Woman Who Feeds the Cottontail Rabbits.” The Hopper, 2024. https://www.hoppermag.org/issue-9-2

Nominated for Best of the Net, for 2026

https://mailchi.mp/f5086d1aae5b/best-of-17994920?e=188f356d76

“A Design that Could be Eventual.” Crosswinds Poetry Journal, 2024. https://crosswindspoetry.com/,

“Standing Beside El Crater Elegante at Night—” & “Outside I’m Okay, Inside I’m Not” & “Ode to a Desert Tortoise” & “Picasso Painting on a Barcelona Museum Cup” & “Silence is Not an Absence” & “Settling for Less with Love” & “The Olive Tree” & “Of Death and Memory” & “Rescue, Not Capture” & “No Longer Lost in the Laguna Salada” & “The Dragon of Borrego Springs, California” & “Postcard to Jonathan.” Cholla Needles, 2023. https://www.chollaneedles.com/2023/09/new-issue-cholla-needles-81.html,

“And His Kingdom Will Have No End.” San Diego Poetry Annual: Greetings from Tent City. Poems from The City and Beyond, San Diego Entertainment & Arts Guild (SDEAG), 2023-24.

“Haven in a Giant Sunflower.” A Year in Ink— San Diego Writers, Ink Anthology, The Ink Spot Press, San Diego Writers, Ink, 2023.

“A Prayer for Jaklín Amei Rosemery Caal Maquín (2011-2018).” Under a Warm Green Linden, Green Linden Press, 2023, https://www.greenlindenpress.com/issue15-donna-castaneda,

“Paolo Freire said let love, the heart of revolution, into the room.” Litmora, 2023. https://www.litmoralitmag.com/donna-castaneda-untitled

“Giant Asteroid, or What Would I Do Today if the World Ended Tomorrow?” San Antonio Review, 2022. https://www.sareview.org/pub/zyrl8gb9,

“Puzzles.” Journal of Undiscovered Poets, 2021. https://issuu.com/jlederman/docs/j2_final?fr=sM2EyZDI5ODMyNzU

 “Grace at the Factory” & “La Poeta.” Metamorfosis: The Journal of Northwest Chicano Art and Culture,1978. https://www.historylink.org/File/8294,

National High School Poetry Press, 1974, poem published in “Young America Sings”

Essays

“Place, Identity, and Resistance in the River Poetry of Emmy Perez and Natalie Diaz.” Midwest Quarterly, Fall 2025, pp. 1-14.

Projects

Project Director, Youth Poetry Workshops in Imperial County-2024-25

Editor, Project Chapbook: Dancing Feelings: Poetry by Imperial Valley Youth

Funded by California Humanities Quick Grant

Work in Psychology

Donna Castañeda’s work in psychology can be seen here https://psychology.sdsu.edu/people/donna-castaneda/