Syra Ortiz-Blanes is a Puerto Rican journalist and poet. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in May 2017, where she studied History and English with a concentration in creative writing. At Penn, she was an arts writer for 34th Street, The Daily Pennsylvanian‘s arts and culture magazine.You can find her work in The Philadelphia Citizen, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Hyperallergic, WHYY, and others. When not writing, she’s probably experimenting in the kitchen, doing yoga, or hanging out with Maya, her Boston Terrier.