MA in Literary Studies from Universidad Javeriana and Ph.D. in Literature from The University of Iowa. She is a Professor and the Director of the Latin American Studies program at Loyola University Maryland. Author of La novela sicaresca. Testimonio, sensacionalismo y ficción (EAFIT, 2009); of articles on narco-culture in Narco-ficciones en México y Colombia (2016) and Narco-dependencias en el hemisferio occidental (2018); on narratives of forced displacement in peer-reviewed journals in Colombia and the United States; and the co-edited volume La otra mirada: victimarios en la literatura latinoamericana contemporánea (Bonilla-Artigas, 2021).