Fanny Carrión de Fierro

Fanny Carrión de Fierro (1936) is an Ecuadorian poet, literary critic, essayist and university professor. She is a 4-time winner of Ecuador’s Gabriela Mistral National Poetry Award. She has published essays on a variety of topics, including politics, culture, and society. Her poems have also appeared in English-language anthologies such as “These Are Not Sweet Girls: Poetry by Latin American Women” (1994) and “Eye to Eye-Women: Their Words and Worlds” (1997). She has taught at several universities in Ecuador and the United States. She is currently a professor at Ecuador’s Pontifical Catholic University (Quito). She has also been a visiting professor and Fulbright Scholar at Keene State College in New Hampshire, Willamette University in Oregon, and several other universities in Ecuador. Her work has been translated into English.

Family

Fanny Carrión de Fierro’s parents were Luis Enrique Carrión Carvajal and Leonor Acosta from Ibarra, Ecuador. Carrión de Fierro married Gustavo Adolfo Fierro Zevallos (Ph.D. in linguistics). They had four children: Gustavo Adolfo, Patricia Natalia, Luis Alberto and Pablo Fernando.

Education

She received a Doctorate in Literature from the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador (Quito, 1981), as well as a Master of Arts degree from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Bachelor’s degree (Licenciatura) in Education from the Central University of Ecuador.

She has been on the board of the Association of College Professors of the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador in Quito. She is also on the board on several development non-governmental organizations.

Member of

  • “Grupo America” – an Ecuadorian literary group.
  • Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana [Ecuadorian House of Culture], Literature Section.

Works

Poetry

  • En la Voz del Silencio (1980)
  • Ten poems translated into English included in the anthology These are not Sweet Girls, Poetry by Latin American Women, edited by Marjorie Agosin (1994)
  • Where light was born: A personal anthology of selected poems by Fanny Carrión de Fierro (1999; translated by Sally Cheney Bell)
  • Donde nació la Luz: Antología Personal (2000)
  • Desde el beso del tiempo and Esta voz, in Poetic Voices without Borders, edited by Robert L. Girón (2005)
  • Alfa Amor, Donde Nació la Luz and Geografía del Corazón, in Poetic Voices without Borders 2, edited by Robert L. Girón (2009)
  • Ecuador, on erotic attraction, “Hidden Pleasure” in Eye to Eye-Women: Their Words and Worlds, edited by Vanessa Baird, introduction by Anita Desai (1997)

Short stories

  • The Golden Ear of Corn and Other Stories, bilingual collection of short stories. Centro de Publicaciones de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, October 2010.

Criticism

  • José de la Cuadra: Precursor del realismo mágico hispanoamericano (1993)
  • Los Sangurimas, novela precursora de Cien Años de soledad, an essay about the novel “Los Sangurimas” by José de la Cuadra
  • Cien Años de Soledad, Historia y Mito de lo Americano, in: Lectura de García Márquez (Doce Estudios), edited by Manuel Corrales Pascual (Quito: Centro de Publicaciones de la Pontifica Universidad Católica de Ecuador, 1975)

Awards

  • Gabriela Mistral National Poetry Award (1958, 1961, 1981 and 1985)
  • National Poetry Award of Ecuador (1962)
  • “Juana de Ibarbuoru” Poetry Prize, Montevideo, Uruguay (1995).

Other writers with the last name Carrión

Fanny León Cordero

Fanny León Cordero (Gualaceo Canton, October 15, 1920) was an Ecuadorian jurist and poet. León was a member of the Association of Contemporary Writers of Ecuador, whose annual poetry contest is named after her. In 1947 León became Ecuador’s first female jurist, she worked as a judge for 31 years.

Continue reading “Fanny León Cordero”

Rita Lecumberri

Rita Lecumberri Robles (Guayaquil, November, 14, 1831 – Guayaquil, December 23, 1910) was an Ecuadorian writer and educator. She was a published and awarded poet and essayist. She is also noted for her contribution to the education of women in Ecuador. She was director of the Escuela San Alejo in 1880-82 and 1882-95. A school, (El colegio Rita Lecumberri) is named after her as well as an award.

Continue reading “Rita Lecumberri”

Blanca Martínez Mera

Blanca Martínez Mera de Tinajero (Ambato, October 5, 1897 – Ambato, June 20, 1976) was an Ecuadorian writer and teacher. With the publication of her book En la paz del campo in 1940, she became the first woman to publish a novel in Ecuador. Her parents were the writer Luis A. Martínez (1869–1909) and Rosario Mera Iturralde, the daughter of the writer Juan León Mera (1832–1894). Later in life she became the director of the Casa de Montalvo, a museum and cultural center in Ambato, whose eponymous magazine she edited for many years. A school in her hometown bears her name in honor of her memory.

Continue reading “Blanca Martínez Mera”

Eugenia Viteri

Blanca Eugenia Viteri Segura (Guayaquil, July 4, 1928 – Quito, September 21, 2023) is an Ecuadorian novelist, short story writer, anthologist, women’s rights activist, and teacher. Viteri has published over a dozen books including novels, short story collections, and anthologies. Her work has been translated into English, Russian, and Bulgarian. She has been a member of the House of Ecuadorian Culture since 1962. She founded the Manuela Sáenz Cultural Foundation in 1983. Through her work with the foundation, Viteri became one of the most important defenders of women’s rights in Ecuador. In 2008, President Rafael Correa honored her with the Rosa Campuzano National Prize. She was among the first to receive the newly created award, which recognizes the work of noteworthy Ecuadorian women.

Continue reading “Eugenia Viteri”

Yanna Hadatty

Yanna Hadatty Mora (Guayaquil, 1969) is an Ecuadorian essayist and short story writer. Haddatty has lived in Mexico since 1992, where she finished her higher education and worked as a professor. She received her doctorate in Ibero-American Literature from the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where she later worked as a professor and contemporary literature researcher. She also taught at the University of Sor Juana Cloister and the UAM Xochimilco. She is a full member of Ecuador’s House of Culture and the Executive Secretary of the Association of Ecuadorians in Mexico. She has been a member of Mexico’s National System of Researchers since 2005.

Continue reading “Yanna Hadatty”

Sonia Romo Verdesoto

Sonia Romo Verdesoto de Augustín is an Ecuadorian poet and diplomat. She was the only female member of the Tzantzismo movement in Ecuador during the 1960s. Verdesoto served as the Ecuadorian consul to Haiti.

Role in Tzantzismo

Sonia Romo Verdesoto was interviewed by Susana Freire García for the book Tzantzismo: tierno e insolente (2008; Tzantzismo: Tender and Insolent), where she discussed her role in the movement and its influence and effects on Ecuadorian culture


Works

Ternura del aire (1963).

Aleyda Quevedo Rojas

Aleyda Quevedo Rojas (Quito, 1972) is an Ecuadorian poet and journalist. She is regarded as an important voice in contemporary Latin American poetry. Among her best-known works are the poems “Algunas rosas verdes” (1996), for which she won that year’s Jorge Carrera Andrade Award, and “Soy mi cuerpo” (2006), in which she uses the human figure as an escape from the fears and anguish provoked by death. The latter book and another one, “Jardín de dagas” (2013), were translated into French. In 2017, the House of Ecuadorian Culture published the book “Cierta manera de la luz sobre el cuerpo,” a compilation of her poems up to that point.

Continue readingAleyda Quevedo Rojas

María Piedad Castillo de Levi

María Piedad Castillo de Levi (Guayaquil, July 6, 1888 – Quito, March 4, 1962) she was an Ecuadorian writer, poet, and journalist. She is also regarded as an important feminist who fought for women’s suffrage in Ecuador, for which she was targeted by the authorities. Castillo traveled to Paris to study in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the Sorbonne. On her return to Ecuador, she began working for the publication El Telégrafo Literario. She wrote numerous poems, which appeared both in El Telégrafo and in various magazines. In June 1933, she funded the magazine Nuevos Horizontes with a group of fellow feminists. It served as the media organ of the Women’s Legion of Popular Education, an organization that worked to improve the rights of women workers. They also created a radio program, which the presidential candidate José María Velasco Ibarra appeared on in 1934. In 1935, Castillo was a candidate for minister of education, and El Telégrafo supported her candidacy. But women were still broadly excluded from Ecuadorian politics at the time, so she was denied the position. She served as the Ecuadorian delegate to the Inter-American Commission of Women for many years, beginning in 1940. She also joined the House of Ecuadorian Culture in Guayas and Pichincha beginning in 1946. Castillo traveled widely, spending long periods in the United States and even working as a foreign correspondent in Germany. She was a member of the National Press Club in Washington D.C. In recognition of her poetic work, the House of Ecuadorian Culture published her collection “Poemas de Ayer y de Hoy” in 1962.

Continue reading “María Piedad Castillo de Levi”

María Clara Sharupi Jua

María Clara Sharupi Jua (Morona Santiago, 1964) is an Ecuadorian writer, poet, and translator, who writes in Spanish and Shuar, an indigenous language of Ecuador’s Amazon basin. She writes poetry in Shuar, while translating it into Spanish in order to reach a wider audience. She co-wrote the book “Amanece en nuestras vidas” (2011), the first anthology of poetry from Ecuadorian indigeneous women writers, and wrote the short story collection “Tarimiat” (2019), which was written in Shuar, Spanish, and English. Sharupi Jua also works as a translator and radio and television presenter in Shuar and Spanish. She was a member of the translation team that worked on the official Shuar translation of Ecuador’s Constitution. She lives in Quito, where she has also worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Migration on indigenous issues.

Continue reading “María Clara Sharupi Jua”

Karina Galvez

Karina Galvez (Guayaquil, July 7, 1964) is an award-winning poet with Ecuadorian and American citizenship. She has lived in Orange County, California since 1985. In 1995, she published her book “Karina Gálvez – Poesía y Cantares”[Karina Galvez – Poetry and Songs], which includes both English and Spanish versions of her poems with a prologue written by León Roldós Aguilera, Ecuador’s former vice president. She is also a songwriter and author of children’s poems and short stories. Her Spanish poems have been translated into English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Bulgarian, Slovene, and Czech.

Continue reading “Karina Galvez”

María Fernanda Espinosa

María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés (b. September 7, 1964, Salamanca, Spain) is an Ecuadorian politician, diplomat, writer, and poet affiliated with the political party PAIS Alliance. She holds the distinction of being the first woman to serve as Ecuador’s minister of national defense, the first woman to be appointed as Ecuador’s permanent representative to the United Nations in New York, and the first Latina woman to be elected as president of the UN General Assembly. Prior to her political and diplomatic career, she was an Associate Professor and Researcher at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO). Ms. Espinosa Garcés is also a prolific writer and poet, having published over 30 academic articles on various topics such as the Amazon River, culture, heritage, climate change, and foreign policy, among others. She has authored five volumes of poetry and was awarded the Ecuadorian National Poetry Prize in 1990.

Continue reading “María Fernanda Espinosa”

Hipatia Cárdenas de Bustamante

Hipatia Cárdenas de Bustamante, also known as Aspacia (Quito, March 23, 1889 – Quito, February 9, 1972) was an Ecuadorian writer, politician, suffragist, and feminist. She was one of the pioneering defenders of women’s suffrage in Ecuador. In 1929, she became the first female Councilor of State, and in 1932, she became the first female candidate for the presidency. She fought for respect in the women’s right to vote in Ecuador after its approval in 1929 and the appearance of groups that were against it. In 1943 she published her book “Oro, rojo y azul,” and wrote for the newspapers El Día, El Comercio, and the magazine América.

Continue reading “Hipatia Cárdenas de Bustamante”

Luz Elisa Borja Martínez

Luz Elisa Borja Martínez (Riobamba, May 15, 1903 – Riobamba, July 10, 1927) was an Ecuadorian poet, pianist, painter, and sculptor. In only 24 years of life, she amassed an extensive body of written work, which her brother Luis Alberto published after her death in two books titled “Cofre Romántico” and “La Bella Durmiente.” The second book contains the poem “Quiero Llorar” (I Mourn), which she wrote in 1918, at the age of 15, after the death of the mother superior of the Riobamba Sisters of Charity. It has seven stanzas, two of which became the lyrics for the Ecuadorian pasillo called “Lamparilla.” The music was composed by Miguel Ángel Casares Viteri, who was inspired by Borja’s poem and his dismay over the damage caused by a Chanchán River flood. Some of her original works can be found at the House of Ecuadorian Culture in Chimborazo.

Continue reading “Luz Elisa Borja Martínez”