María Auxiliadora Balladares Uquillas (born 1980) is an Ecuadorian writer and professor at

Universidad San Francisco de Quito Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ (informally Universidad San Francisco, or simply USFQ) is a liberal-arts, private university located in Quito, Ecuador. It was the first totally private self-financed university in Ecuador and the first l ...

Biography

María Auxiliadora Balladares was born in Guayaquil in 1980. She received bachelor of arts degrees in sociology and liberal arts at

, followed by a master's at the

Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador The Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador (PUCE) (English: ''Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador'') is a Pontifical Catholic university founded in 1946 in Quito, Ecuador. History The university opened in the fall of 1946, with Carlo ...

. She earned a

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

in Latin American literature at the University of Pittsburgh in 2018 with the dissertation ''Una rara inocencia: el debilitamiento de la metáfora en Dalton, Alegría, Ledesma Vázquez y Watanabe'' (A Rare Innocence: The Weakening of the Metaphor in Dalton, Alegría, , and Watanabe). She began her literary career by publishing stories that appeared in various local anthologies. With the story "Jamón serrano", she won second place at the tenth Pablo Palacio Short Story Biennial. Her first book was the short story collection ''Las vergüenzas'' (The Shames), published in 2013. It is made up of ten stories, and was well received by Ecuadorian critics. The story "En el sótano" (In the Cellar), originally written in 1999, tells the story of two children who discover their father's homosexual relationship with the man he had passed off as his brother for years. In 2017, Balladares published the poetry collection ''Animal'', which was inspired by her affinity for wildlife and her relationship with the wilderness. The work took second place at the seventh Cuenca Festival de la Lira. Her poetry collection ''Guayaquil'' won first prize at the 2017 Pichincha Poetry Awards. The work, published in 2019 by the Provincial Council of Pichincha, brings together 22 poems that present the author's experiences during a trip to Guayaquil as a poetic journal. The writer and literary critic

Daniela Alcívar Bellolio Daniela Alcívar Bellolio (pen name, Nela Martínez; born March 3, 1982) is an Ecuadorian author, editor, and literary critic. Literary career After finishing her studies, Alcívar Bellolio moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she started a se ...

highlighted the book's exploration of themes such as the female body, loss, and

lesbian A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...

love. She also pointed out the poem "A mí también me gusta Marosa di Giorgio" (I Also Like Marosa di Giorgio) as one of the most powerful in the work. At the end of 2022, Balladares published the poetry collection ''Acantile duerme piloto'', which included twelve love poems. With it, she won the 2023

Jorge Carrera Andrade Award The Jorge Carrera Andrade Award ( es, Premio Jorge Carrera Andrade) is a literary award given by the Municipality of Quito, Ecuador to the best poetry book published during the year. It is awarded simultaneously with the Joaquín Gallegos Lara Nat ...

, given by the municipality of

Quito Quito (; qu, Kitu), formally San Francisco de Quito, is the capital and largest city of Ecuador, with an estimated population of 2.8 million in its urban area. It is also the capital of the province of Pichincha. Quito is located in a valley o ...

to the best poetry book of the year.

Works

* ''Las vergüenzas'' (2013), short stories * ''Todos creados en un abrir y cerrar de ojos'' (2015), essay

Poetry

* ''Animal'' (2017) * ''Guayaquil'' (2019) * ''Caballo y arveja'' (2021) * ''Acantile duerme piloto'' (2022)

References

External links

María Auxiliadora Balladares Uquillas
at

{{DEFAULTSORT:Balladares, Maria Auxiliadora 21st-century Ecuadorian poets 21st-century Ecuadorian women writers 1980 births Academic staff of Universidad San Francisco de Quito Ecuadorian lesbians Ecuadorian LGBTQ poets Ecuadorian women short story writers Lesbian poets Living people Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador alumni University of Pittsburgh alumni Writers from Guayaquil