is a writer, poet, and university professor. She has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in prose, Kimbilio, CantoMundo and the Sundress Academy for the Arts. She holds an MFA from Florida International University and a PhD in creative writing and literature from the University of Missouri. She has received awards from the Independent Publisher Book Awards, Academy of American Poets and Best of the Net and she has received a Pushcart Prize Special Mention, was a finalist for the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in fiction and longlisted for the Aspen Words Prize and the Reading the West Book Awards. She has been published in or has forthcoming publications in Boston Review, Passages North, Puerto del Sol, Afro-Hispanic Review, Vassar Review, Columbia Journal, The Texas Review, The Breakbeat Poets: LatiNext, Deep South Magazine, Jabberwock Review, Luna Luna, Split this Rock, Verse Daily, Connotations Press, Latinas: Protests and Struggle and on poets.org among other places. She has been on staff at Pleiades (Fiction Editor, current), The Missouri Review (Poetry Editor, Contest Editor), Origins Literary Journal (Poetry Editor), Gulf Stream Magazine (Staff) and Florida Book Review (Contributing Editor.) The author of the cross-genre collection SCAR ON/SCAR OFF, the short story collection When Trying to Return Home and the poetry collection KINDS OF GRACE (‘24), she is an assistant professor of literature and creative writing at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. SCAR ON/SCAR OFF received an Independent Publishers Book Award in poetry and her story collection When Trying to Return Home was an Editors’ Choice from The New York Times, a Must Read of 2023 by the Chicago Public Library, a best fiction book of the year by Kirkus Reviews and one of the Most Anticipated by the Today Show. The collection was long listed for the Aspen Words Literary Prize and Reading the West Awards. She is also faculty at the Yale Young Writers’ Workshop 2023 and Yale Writers’ Workshop 2024.

McCauley has been called a poet who is  “reshaping the poetry landscape” by Pop Sugar, Elle Magazine calls her work “powerful”, Latinx in Publishing recommends her work, Hip Latina listed her as an Afro-Latina writer who discusses the “duality of [her] identity.”  , Electric Literature says she is a Puerto Rican writer who tells “new stories”, Leyendo Lat Am says she is a Puerto Rican writer to “read right now” and the Columbia Daily Tribune said she “can write her way into and out of any situation, style or genre.”