KAREN JUANITA CARRILLO is a Brooklyn, New York-based author and a frequent speaker on African American and Afro Latino history and politics. Her news reporting has widened knowledge about Black communities in the Americas and won awards from the New York Association of Black Journalists, New California Media Awards, and the National Newspapers Publishers Association.
Carrillo is co-founder of the website www.Afropresencia.org, which she started to help promote the dissemination of information about Afrodescendants in the Americas. AfroPresencia is a United Nations-accredited NGO; one of its tasks is to help organize grassroots groups that are working to provide aid to people of African descent.
Karen is also the author of the following books:
- San Mateo de Cangrejos: historical notes on a self-emancipated Black community in Puerto Rico by Gilberto Aponte Torres; translated by Karen Juanita Carrillo. (SUNY Press––forthcoming in January 2023)
- African American-Latino Relations in the 21st Century: When Cultures Collide (ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Press, 2017; ISBN: 978-1-4408-2961-1)
- African American History Day by Day: A Reference Guide to Events (ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Press, June 2012; ISBN: 978-1-59884-360-6),
- Bibliography Of Life In The Black Americas (Dec 31, 2012; ASIN: B00AVE92J0), and
The View from Chocó: The Afro-Colombian Past, Their Lives in the Present, and Their Hopes for the Future (May 21, 2010; ISBN: 1451565275 / 1-4515-6527-5).