Ciara Alfaro is a writer, romantic, and descendant of magicians from Lubbock, Texas. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best American Essays, Swamp Pink, Passages North, The Normal School, Witness, and more. She is the winner of Iron Horse Literary Review’s 2022 PhotoFinish Contest, a 2023 AWP Intro Journals Prize, and Southeast Review's 2024 Ned Stuckey-French Nonfiction Contest. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Ciara has received support from Hedgebrook, the Good Hart Artist Residency, and the Anderson Center. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota.

She currently serves as the 2024-25 Olive B. O'Connor Fellow in nonfiction at Colgate University, where she is working on a memoir.