I am a writer, trained in Physics and, fair to say, life-long student, as well as, unavoidably, and eternally, an island girl. Puerto Rico is the Caribbean island where I grew up. It is my country and my home. I migrated to Cambridge, Massachusetts to complete a fellowship at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Before that, I completed a master's degree in Physics, and a double bachelor's degree in Physics and Biology. Currently, I am a medical student, cultivating a dual career in writing and science. El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico's main newspaper, and specifically, Sr. Francisco Vacas, gave me my first writing experience for a general audience. With Francisco as my mentor, I wrote a bi-monthly column called "Ciencia Boricua", which was named Best New Column of the Year Award by the colleagues at the newspaper in 2005. In 2009, I collaborated with Harvard Science, under the supervision of Pulizer Prize winning journalist B.D. Colen. That same year, I graduated from the Science Writing Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). During my time there, I had the amazing opportunity to polish my skills as a writer under the guidance of wonderful writers such as Russ Rymer (Genie), Alan Lightman (Einstein's Dreams), Marcia Bartusiak (The Day We Found The Universe), Robert Kanigel (Faux Leather), and Tom Levenson (Einstein in Berlin). At MIT, I also had the pleasure of learning the craft fiction writing under the tutelage of insightful, funny, and quirky Junot Díaz (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for his first novel "The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao") — one of the most wonderful and formative learning experiences I have ever had as a writer. That same year at Harvard, I finally had the opportunity to formalize my love for poetry under the guidance of poet Peter Richards (Helsinki, Nude Siren). I believe that being a writer is ten percent talent and ninety percent hard work - practice, practice and more practice. Junot Diaz said it best: "You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she/he writes well and easily, because she/he has amazing talent, because everything she/he does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway." I would say a writer is a writer because You have something to say, because you believe in your capacity and potential for growth, because you do not give up in the face of failure or rejection, and because you believe that having a voice is important, not because it will make you any more special than the rest, but because your voice is a witness to the humanity that exists, and in that regard, it can make a significant contribution. My name is Iris Mónica Vargas. I believe in empathy, in the great potential we have as human beings to become collaborators for good and goodness in this amazing —sometimes sad, sometimes happy—space we call Earth.