Lisa María Madera

PLEASE NOTE
this site
and the author of this site
are both
UNDER
CONSTRUCTION
and,
like you,
are subjects
to profound
and unexpected
change.

In the midst of
our
evolution,
may we all have the courage to hang on to each other
in this act of collective transformation.

May we take great care
with our words
for through language
and story
the world
comes into being
again and again
and again.

About Me

I was born in the middle of the world at -0.17255, -78.48921 on the flanks of the volcano Guagua Pichincha on May 12, 1965.

I was born in Quito--Luz de las Americas--so named not for the golden shimmering pearls of city lights that lace the urban mountain slopes or the gold plaited walls of the Jesuit La Compañía Basilica embedded with guanto blossoms, chakanas, and rays of the Andean Sun or for the gold plaited walls of the Inca Atahualpa's temples that once shimmered every morning just after dawn as Inti´s light began to flicker across Pacha Mama´s sleeping form.

No, Light of the Americas, instead, to recall the PRIMER GRITO DE INDEPENDENCIA on August 10, 1809.

I grew up in the western Amazon on the banks of the Río Pastaza in a military town named for Shell Oil.

I think and write about EVOLUTION--about biodiversity and sacred exchange. I write about the way that bio cultural narratives shape our relationship to this sacred earth.

Guagua Pichincha
my w'aka birth mountain

I was born to volcanoes. I was born in the middle of the world at -0.17255, -78.48921 on the flanks of the volcano Guagua Pichincha on May 12, 1965. Guagua means “child”and Guagua Pichincha is the child of the sultry, seductive volcano Isabel Tungurahua, whose jealous husbands and lovers fight in fiery fury over her. Depending which mountain you live near, Pichincha’s father is either the massive volcano Chimborazo, the tallest mountain on the planet if measured from Earth’s center, or the nearby elegant stratocone Cotopaxi. In the Andes, the mountains are alive. In Cotopaxi province, they say that when Guagua Pichincha cries, his father Cotopaxi complains and his mother Tungurahua responds. These mountains are family.

mosaic of my work

LUZ MARÍA

Nominated by Hypertext
for consideration as Best American Short Story 2021

¨This is the town where stories begin.
This is the town where they first come
before they vanish to the place where they’re called...¨

THE RED ROCKS

Essay in Ecopsychology
Part of The Covid Chronicles
for a PDF of this article please contact me

There is a cauldron of casual cruelty brewing on the firepit of our culture, a venomous cannibal soup nourished by the marrow of human greed and narcissism. Human exceptionalism. Unless we shut our eyes, stop up our ears, close our mouths, cover our skin and vanish into our burrows, we drink this soup daily.

The Empathy of Birds

Essay included in the Kinship Series
Also published in Minding Nature
Earlier version in Real Ground
Part of The Covid Chronicles

When I think about evolution and what it might mean for human beings, I am compelled by the ways that creatures survive, adapt, and evolve through the ingenious powers of their creative solutions, often through their ability to reach across the species divide and cooperate with another kind.

VISIONS OF CHRIST IN THE AMAZON

Essay in JSRNC
for a PDF of this article please contact me

In the Amazon, under the influence of ayahuasca, the miraculous power of Christ takes root, not in the European or Mediterranean imaginary, but within the fertile ground of the Amazonian world. Under the vine’s influence, the Christian story takes on a radical botanical edge that aligns and expands according to the Gospel’s vision of Christ as an uncanny person who has extraordinary encounters with the natural world.

TRIPS