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Come to have a gourmet dinner in an emblematic café of Porto and participate in a lively discussion about the writing process and the topic of Writing and Imagination. Selene Vicente (University of Porto) will moderate the discussion among Portuguese experts representing four crafts of writing: a writer, two poets, a literary critic and a translator.
The price per dinner guest is 35€. This can be paid at the registration desk on the first day of conference. Number of available places is very limited, so please register no late than July 4.
 Richard Zimler
Writer |
Richard Zimler was born in Roslyn Heights, a suburb of New York, in 1956. After earning a bachelor’s degree in comparative religion from Duke University (1977) and a master’s degree in journalism from Stanford University (1982), he worked for eight years as a journalist, mainly in the San Francisco Bay area. In 1990, he moved to Porto, Portugal, where he taught journalism for sixteen years, first at the College of Journalism and later at the University of Porto.
Richard has published eight novels over the last 15 years. In chronological order, they are: The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, Unholy Ghosts, The Angelic Darkness, Hunting Midnight, Guardian of the Dawn, The Search for Sana, The Seventh Gate and The Warsaw Anagrams. His novels have appeared on bestseller lists in 12 different countries, including the USA, Great Britain, Portugal, Italy, Brazil and Australia.
Richard has won numerous prizes for his work, including the Marquis de Ouro prize in 2010 - as Book of the Year in Portugal - for The Warsaw Anagrams. This prize is voted on by high school teachers and students. He also won the 2009 Alberto Benveniste prize in fiction for Guardian of the Dawn (for best Jewish-themed novel published in France), and the 1998 Herodotus Award, for The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon (Best First Historical Novel). Additionally, The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon was picked as 1998 Book of the Year by three British critics. Hunting Midnight, The Search for Sana and The Seventh Gate have all been nominated for the International IMPAC Literary Award, the richest prize in the English-speaking world. He was also granted a 1994 U.S. National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Fiction.
The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, Hunting Midnight, Guardian of the Dawn and The Seventh Gate form the “Sephardic Cycle,” a group of inter-connected – but fully independent – novels about different branches and generations of a Portuguese Jewish family.
A short film he wrote and acted in - The Slow Mirror - was awarded the Best Drama award at the 2010 New York Downtown Short Film Festival.
Richard also writes reviews for the L.A. Times. When he’s not writing, he enjoys gardening at his weekend house in the north of Portugal.
To know more about Richard Zimler, please visit www.zimler.com. |
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 Manuel António Pina
Poet |
Born in 1943 in Sabugal (Beira Alta/Portugal), Manuel António Pina is a
poet, writer, playwright, translator and columnist.
He graduated in law from the University of Coimbra. Between 1971 and
2001, he was a journalist at Jornal de Notícias, in Oporto. He is
currently a columnist for Jornal de Notícias and Notícias Magazine.
He is the author of forty books of poetry, fiction, children’s literature and
twenty plays. His work has been adapted to cinema, TV, comics, as well as music.
His poetry has been published in France (French and Corsican), Brazil,
United States, Spain (Castilian, Catalan and Galician), Denmark, Germany,
The Netherlands, Russia, Croatia and Bulgaria, and his fiction and children's literature in Denmark, Spain, Germany and Canada.
In 2011, he won the Camões Prize, the most prestigious award of Portuguese language and literature.
He also received the following prizes, among others: Prize from the Portuguese Center of Theater for the Children and Youth (CPTIJ) for the ensemble of his work, 1988; National Prize for Chronicle, Press Club/Journalists Club, 1993; “Prémio da Crítica” from the Portuguese Branch of the International Association of Literary Critics, 2002; Luís Miguel Nava Poetry Prize, 2003;The Grand Poetry Prize from the Portuguese Writers Association/CTT, 2003. |
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 Joana Matos Frias
Literary critic |
Current Rank: Adjunct Professor, Department of Portuguese and Romanic Studies, Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto.
Researcher at Instituto de Literatura Comparada Margarida Losa (www.ilcml.com), and member of the international research network LyraCompoetics (www.lyracompoetics.org).
Education
2006 Ph.D., Literature, Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto.
(Dissertation: Rhetoric of Image and Poetics of Imagism in Ruy Cinatti’s Poetry).
1999 M.A., Portuguese and Brazilian Literature, Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto.
(Dissertation: Time and Negation: Essay on Murilo Mendes)
1995 B.A., Portuguese and English Studies, Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto.
Teaching and Research Interests
Literary and aesthetic theory;
Modern and contemporary Portuguese and Brazilian poetry;
Interartistic studies (poetry, cinema, photography, painting).
Research and Scholarly Activities
Book Authored
O Erro de Hamlet: Poesia e Dialética em Murilo Mendes [Hamlet’s Error: Poetry and Dialectics in Murilo Mendes] (Rio de Janeiro, 7letras, 2001).
Books Edited
Ana Cristina César Um Beijo que Tivesse um Blue [A Kiss that Had a Blue] (V. N. Famalicão, Quasi, 2005);
Cadernos de Poesia [Poetry Notebooks] (Porto, Campo das Letras, 2005; with Luís Adriano Carlos);
Poemas com Cinema [Poems with Cinema] (Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim, 2010; with Rosa Maria Martelo and Luís Miguel Queirós).
Scientific Events
1912-2012: A Time to Reason and Compare — An International Congress on Modernism (1- 3 March 2012, Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto | Fundação de Serralves). |
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 Helena Topa
Translator |
Helena Topa is a translator. PhD in German Studies / German Literature, Universidade Nova, Lisbon (2001), where she also lectured on German Literature and Culture between 1990 and 2006.
During this period, her research interests focused mainly on the process of writing short prose (essays, aphorisms, fragments, annotations, journals) of German-speaking authors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (namely Franz Kafka and Elias Canetti).
More recently, especially since 2006, she has devoted herself to literary translation of German-speaking authors, among others, Bertolt Brecht, Günter Grass, Herta Müller and Elfriede Jelinek.
She completed a Master’s in Clinical and Health Psychology (2009), at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Porto.
Translations
Brecht, Bertolt. “Quanto custa o ferro?” [“How much is your iron?”] e “Dansen” para o vol. V das Obras Completas, Editora Cotovia (in press).
Grass, Günter. (2006) – Descascando a Cebola. Autobiografia 1939-1959 [Peeling the Onion. Autobiography 1939-1959]. Lisboa: Casa das Letras.
Grass, Günter. (2008) – Escrever depois de Auschwitz [Writing after Auschwitz]. Lisboa: D. Quixote.
Grass, Günter. (2009) – O Tambor de Lata [The Tin Drum]. Lisboa: D. Quixote.
Müller, Herta. (2011) – O Rei faz Vénia e Mata [The King Bows and Kills] (Ensaios, Essays) . Lisboa: Texto.
Karge, Manfred. (2011) – A Conquista do Pólo Sul [The Conquest of the South Pole], para o Ponto Teatro / FITEI, estreada em Maio de 2011, Porto. Premiered May 2011.
Jelinek, Elfriede. (2012) – Os Contratos do Comerciante. Uma Comédia Bancocrática [The Merchant’s Contracts. A Comedy of Economics], para o Ponto Teatro, estreada em Junho de 2012, Porto, sob o título “Capital Fuck”. Premiered June 2012 with the title “Capital Fuck”.
Other publications
Topa, Helena. (2003) - A Palavra de Fogo. Uma Leitura Contextualizante da Prosa Breve de Elias Canetti [The Word of Fire. A contextualizing analysis of Elias Canetti’s Annotations]. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian/Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (PhD thesis).
Topa, Helena. (2011) – Traduzir Günter Grass [Translating Günter Grass]. Revista REAL, nº2, julho de 2011, pp. 25-41. |
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 Ana Luísa Amaral
Poet |
ANA LUÍSA AMARAL was born in Lisbon, in 1956. She is Associate Professor at the Department of Anglo-American Studies at the University of Porto, where she he held her Ph.D. on the poetry of Emily Dickinson. She developed her research around Comparative Poetics and Feminist Studies. She is co-author, with Ana Gabriela Macedo, of the Dictionary of Feminist Criticism (Afrontamento, 2005) and coordinated the annotated edition of New Portuguese Letters, by Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta and Maria Velho da Costa (Dom Quixote, 2010). She currently coordinates the international project New Portuguese Letters 40 Years Later, financed by FCT, which envolves 13 international teams and more than 15 countries. She is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, as well as of several children’s books. She translated authors like Eunice de Souza (Cotovia, 2001), John Updike (Civilização, 2009) or Emily Dickinson (Relógio D’Água, 2010). Her most recente books are Vozes (Dom Quixote, 2011), Próspero morreu (Caminho, 2011) and A Tempestade (Quidnovi, 2011). She has been translated into numerous languages, her books being published in Sweden, France, The Netherlands, Brazil, Italy and Venezuela. She received several prizes in Portugal and abroad, among them the international prize Correntes d’Escritas/Casino da Póvoa or the Grande Prémio da Associação Portuguesa de Escritores. |
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