She attended Florida State University, receiving both a Bachelor's and ultimately master's degree in Creative Writing.
Her work has appeared in various literary magazines, including: Puerto del Sol, Lake Effect, Borderlands, Texas Poetry Review, Nimrod International Journal, Gulf Stream, The Florida Review, The Southeast Review, and Tigertail, A South Florida Poetry Annual, as well as in various anthologies including: Paper Dance: 52 Latino Poets, A Century of Cuban-American Writers in Florida, Little Havana Blues, Touching the Fire: Fifteen Poets of Today's Latino Renaissance, Cool Salsa: On Growing Up Latino in the U.S., Like Thunder: Poets Respond to Violence in America, American Diaspora: the poetry of displacement and Burnt Sugar Cana Quemada: Contemporary Cuban Poetry in English and Spanish.
Her collection entitled My Father Sings to My Embarrassment (White Pine Press, 2002), was selected by Cornelius Eady who called Castillo "A tough, clear-eyed poet who is willing to gamble with passion (thank God!!)
In My Father Sings to My Embarrassment, Castillo delves into her Cuban childhood, and we follow her family as they "start over without a language."
The poems chronicle the visit of a Cuban uncle, who is surrounded by relatives that "twenty years and English have turned into strangers," and Castillo's bittersweet return to her homeland: "Even a map cannot show you the way back to a place that no longer exists."