Biographical Note
Linda LaMacchia was born in 1944 in Washington, D.C. As the daughter of a Foreign Service Officer, LaMacchia traveled extensively and lived for a period in Harare, Zimbabwe, and Nairobi, Kenya, while she was a child. LaMacchia earned a bachelor of arts in Political Science from Swarthmore College and attended the Sorbonne in Paris, France, for a year. After college she joined the Peace Corps where she taught English in Tunis, Tunisia, for two years. After the Peace Corps, LaMacchia lived in Blaubeuren, Germany for a year, studying German at the Goethe Institute. She returned to the United States and received a master of arts in comparative literature from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and a certificate in teaching English as a second language from the University of California, Los Angeles. She briefly taught English and French in Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington, D.C.
After her graduation from Swarthmore, LaMacchia frequently traveled to India to visit a college friend. As a result of her personal travels to India, her interest in Indian culture grew and she began her research on Buddhist nuns living in Kinnaur, near the Tibetan border. In the late 1980s, LaMacchia continued her education, pursuing a PhD in South Asian Studies and Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. During this period, she traveled to India frequently, staying at the Tibetan Library in Dharamsala, traveling to villages across the Kinnaur district and collecting the songs and life stories of Buddhist nuns in Hindi, Tibetan, Kinnauri, and English. Upon the completion of her dissertation in 2001, LaMacchia spent a year in India teaching Buddhist culture and Hindi at Antioch College's Education Abroad Program. She also taught courses on South Asian languages, religions, and cultures at DePaul University, Loyola University, American University, and the University of Maryland's University College.
LaMacchia's book Songs and Lives of the Jomo (Nuns) of Kinnaur, Northwest, India, based on her dissertation work, was published in 2008. After the completion of her book, she continued to travel to India frequently to conduct research and collect more songs and life narratives from Buddhist nuns. She continued as an active member of the academic community, publishing papers and presenting at conferences. While in India, she also adopted a dog, named Puppy Durga, who features in many of her photographs and journals. At the time of her death she was working on a memoir about her time with Puppy Durga entitled Travels with Puppy. LaMacchia died in 2017, in Dharamsala, India.