Healing Dust: Poems of Survival
by Florinda Ruiz
Florinda Ruiz was an avid poet and award-winning photographer. After her cancer diagnosis, she dedicated herself to sharing her poetry and photos with the community of cancer patients around the world.
"Healing Dust is a work of poetic alchemy: transforming the anguish and grief of terminal illness into incandescent images and words. Florinda Ruiz’s posthumous volume of poems and accompanying photographs is as much a testimonial to the author’s fierce courage of battling the ravages that cancer and its multifarious treatments inflict on the body and soul, as it is a glorious journey from darkness to light, from desperation to hope, from revolt to lucid understanding, all crystalized in exquisite language and dazzling imagery. The pairing of each poem with a corresponding photograph, most of them taken by the author herself, is a brilliant move that adds depth and multidimensionality to the volume. The “healing dust” that this beautiful soul has sprinkled over the world before her passing, will touch readers of all walks of life, offer hope and solace and envelop you in its shimmering colors."
—Domnica Radulescu, award-winning author of Train to Trieste, Country of Red Azaleas and Dream in a Suitcase.
234mm × 156mm; 64 pages; 32 color photographs
Paperback 978-1-910146-94-1
Ebooks also available
Published 30 May 2025
Florinda Ruiz, 1961–2024
Florinda Ruiz was born on 12 November 1961 in Guadalajara, Spain. She received her B.A. in classical languages at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid and an M.A. and Ph.D. in classical languages from Johns Hopkins University. She taught Spanish and Classics at Washington and Lee University before moving on to the Department of Foreign Languages at Roanoke College, where she retired as associate professor in 2007. She was honored with the Dean's Exemplary Teaching Award in 2005-6. She finished her academic career at Washington and Lee University where she served as director of the Writing Program from 2014 to 2023.
Florinda published across a variety of disciplines. Her essay "Why I Write About War" appeared in the collection Collateral Damage (University of Virginia Press, 2021) edited by Barbara Mujica. Her "Human Cries Keep Falling Like Summer Rain" appeared in Voices on the Move edited by Domnica Radulescu and Roxana Cazan (Solis Press, 2020). With her colleague, Gary Gibbs (Roanoke College), she co-authored several pieces on Arthur Golding's work on Ovid's Metamorphosis. She was also the voice of Rosetta Stone's Spanish courses in 2007 and 2010.
Florinda Ruiz was an avid poet and award-winning photographer. After her cancer diagnosis, she dedicated herself to sharing her poetry and photos with the community of cancer patients around the world. To that end, she assembled this volume in hopes of offering comfort and healing to others.
© Solis Press