Juliana Castro Varón


I’m the Senior Design Editor of A.I. Initiatives at the New York Times, and the founder of the open source library and publishing studio Cita Press. I’ve received fellowships from Fulbright, Harvard and the Mellon Foundation. I also contribute cartoons to The New Yorker.

Things I like: Good jokes, Times New Roman, memes, the literary line between poor memory and fiction, taking baths, rocks shaped as rocks, rocks shaped as UFOs, when my cat looks like a loaf of bread, crying at the movies, watching sunset. 

Other stuff: I’ve taught at the college level and given talks about art, design, AI, ghosts, and more (you can watch some of them online). I wrote a book about art, beauty, my grandma and Patti Smith. It’s called Papel sensible, and it was published in Spanish by Planeta (you can find it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and in some Spanish-speaking bookstores around the world). I’m writing another one but it’s a secret. 

Online: Insta, Ex Twit, Threads, Arena, Email.
Offline: I’m around!
WIKIPEDIA BANDS HOAXES (2017) As I started to contribute to Wikipedia, I discovered the ‘Hoaxes Page, a list of bogus entries that survived for years without being noticed. Included on this list were about a dozen fictional music bands. I designed cover art for these fake bands based on the stories of their removed Wikipedia pages. I also created a fictitious benefit concert linking to donation websites for the victims of Hurrican Maria.