Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz

By Daniel Chacón,

Published May 25, 2025 at 12:00 PM MDT

In this episode of Words on a Wire, hosts Daniel Chacón and Tim Z. Hernandez sit down with Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz—award-winning author, respected curandera, and revered herbal educator—whose healing practices are rooted in the traditions of the Sonoran Desert. Known affectionately as the “Kitchen Curandera,” Felicia shares stories from her journey into traditional healing, from her great-grandmother’s teachings in Old Town Albuquerque to her own transformative work with food, dance, and plant medicine.

Felicia discusses the philosophy behind her acclaimed book Earth Medicines, her evolving role as a healer, and the importance of language, ancestry, and “indigenizing” wellness practices. She reflects on the power of naming, the wisdom of plants, and the spiritual connection between body and creativity. With warmth and insight, she explores how ancient indigenous knowledge is often validated—if not co-opted—by modern science, and emphasizes the importance of honoring traditions rather than rebranding them.

Additional information

For more information on Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz you can visit: https://www.kitchencurandera.com/

To download the podcast version visit wordsonawire.org

Originally aired on May 25, 2025

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WW 16 KTEP Programming

Daniel Chacón

Daniel Chacón’s collection of stories, Unending Rooms, was the 2007 winner of the Hudson Prize. He has also been awarded the American Book Award, the Chris Isherwood Foundation Grant, and the Southwest Book Award. His first collection of stories, Chicano Chicanery was a finalist in the Patterson Fiction Prize and his novel and the shadows took him is available from Simon and Schuster. His new book is a collection of stories called Hotel Júarez: Stories, Rooms and Loops. He’s a professor of Fiction Writing, Kafka, and Latino/a literature in the Creative Writing Department at UTEP.

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Tim Z. Hernandez

Tim Z. Hernandez is a poet, novelist and performance artist. He is the recipient of an American Book Award for poetry, the Zora Neal Hurston Award, the Premio Aztlan Prize for fiction, a Colorado Book Award for poetry, and the International Latino Book Award for historical fiction.

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Will Rose

Will Rose is a longtime technology and marketing executive based out of NYC and Texas. He is the co-founder of Words on a Wire’s publishing imprint, eRadical Books, and now spearheads marketing strategy for the Words on a Wire podcast. He also serves as Chief Technology Officer at the EdTech startup, Student Select, and as Head of Data Science at the artificial intelligence company, Harqen AI.

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