Lisa Gale Garrigues Biography

Lisa Gale Garrigues, also published as Lisa Garrigues, is an American writer, journalist, poet, and photographer who has covered South America and is a contributing editor for 'Yes! magazine. In 2004 she won a Project Censored award in journalism for her coverage of the people's response to the economic crisis in Argentina, and has also published fiction, essays, and poetry in both English and Spanish.

As a correspondent for the magazine Indian Country Today, in 2008 she completed and reported on Longest Walk 2, which went from Alcatraz Island, California, to Washington, D.C., to draw attention to environmental problems and Native American sacred sites.

Biography

Garrigues (born 1954 in Los Angeles, California) attended public schools in Los Angeles, Berkeley, Geneva (Switzerland), and Bellingham, Washington. In the 1970s, she lived in San Francisco, England, France, and Spain, where she witnessed the decline of the dictator Francisco Franco and co-translated, with Alberto Esquival, the first Spanish translation of the folksinger Woody Guthrie's autobiography, Bound for Glory.

She published her first poems and essays in the 1980s in periodicals which included Conditions, Pudding Magazine, and Writer's Digest. In 1984, she earned a B.A. in English from San Francisco State University.

In San Francisco and Los Angeles, she worked in education, marketing, film and as a legal investigator for criminal and civil rights cases. She continued to publish poetry and fiction in diverse literary journals, including Nimrod International, Southwestern American Literature, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Rain Crow, So to Speak, Anthology, God's Friends, Literal Latte, and other periodicals. She read and performed her work in diverse venues, including San Francisco's The Marsh.

In 2001, she moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, which was then experiencing an economic meltdown. For two years, she worked as an English teacher and freelance correspondent for Pacific News Service and Yes! (U.S. magazine, participating in the Argentinian neighborhood assemblies that were then springing up around the city. In Buenos Aires, she edited the website Argentina Now , was a regular contributor to the Argentinian website elatico.com , and was associate producer of the documentary Hope in Hard Times.

She returned to Latin America in 2005, where she traveled throughout Peru and Bolivia for two years, working as a freelance writer/photographer for Indian Country Today, Yes! and Tikkun, reporting on the new Bolivian government of Evo Morales, the effects of natural gas exploitation in the Camisea region of Peru, liberation theology, and other topics.

In 2008, she joined the Longest Walk 2, a five month walk across the United States to draw attention to the environment and Native American sacred sites, and reported on the walk and other Native issues for Indian Country Today.

Selected works

Poetry

• Seeing is Bright Between My Hands (chapbook), Blue Amber Press, 1994
• Reinventing Fire (chapbook), Wild Spiral Press, 2000
• Sky Full of Holes (chapbook), Lizard Blue Press, 2001

Fiction

• "The Night I Spent with My Grandmother's Lover," Literal Latte
• "Dreamspinner," Pacific Coast Journal

Essays

• "Building Protective Walls," Yes!, Summer 2006
• "La Mejor Resistencia a la Inhumanidad Es La Humanidad," Campo Grupal, Issue 39, 2003 (Spanish)
• "Los Blancos," El Atico, May 5, 2003 (Spanish)
• "La Visita," El Atico, May 22, 2003 (Spanish)
• "Cuando Yo Te Vuelva a Ver," El Atico, July 28, 2003 (Spanish)

Translations

• Con Destino A La Gloria (Bound For Glory), Star Books, Producciones Editoriales, Barcelona (1977) ISBN 978-84-365-0959-5 (with Alberto Esquival)

Anthologies

• Just Open A Vein, Writer's Digest Books, 1987 ISBN 978-0-89879-294-2

Awards

• First Prize, Fiction, Pacific Coast Journal, 1999
• First Prize, Prose, Anthology Magazine, 2000
• Project Censored Award, Journalism Department, Sonoma State University, 2004.
• Golden Eagle Award, Best Documentary, Hope in Hard Times (associate producer)