Ana Luísa Amaral


Ana Luísa Amaral was born in Lisbon, in 1956, and lives in the north of Portugal. Professor at the University of Porto, she holds a Ph.D. on the poetry of Emily Dickinson and has academic publications in the areas of English and American Poetry, Comparative Poetics and Feminist Studies. She is a senior researcher and co-director of the Institute for Comparative Literature Margarida Losa. Co-author of the Dictionary of Feminist Criticism and responsible for the annotated edition of New Portuguese Letters and the coordinator of the international project New Portuguese Letters 40 Years Later, financed by FCT, that involves 10 countries and over 60 researchers. Editor of
several academic books, such as Novas Cartas Portuguesas entre Portugal e o Mundo.
She is currently preparing a book of poetry, a novel and two books of essays.
Several plays were staged around her work, such as O olhar diagonal das coisas, A história da Aranha Leopoldina, Próspero Morreu, or Como Tu.
She is currently being translated into English by Margaret Jull Costa, with books published in the United Kingdom and the United States.
In 2019, a book of essays on her work will come out by Peter Lang entitled Resistance and Beauty in Ana Luísa Amaral.

Literary career

Amaral's first volume of poetry, Minha Senhora de Quê, was published in 1990. The collection's title alluded to Maria Teresa Horta's 1971 volume Minha Senhora de Mim, thereby explicitly inscribing Amaral's work into the emergent genealogy of Portuguese women’s poetry. Since then, she has published ten further original collections of poetry and two volumes of collected poems, in addition to several translations and books for children.
Amaral's poetry has been translated into several languages and volumes of her writings have been published in France, Brazil, Italy, Sweden, Holland, Venezuela, Colombia and will soon be published in Mexico and in Germany. She is also represented in many Portuguese and international anthologies. Her work has been awarded several literary prizes, including Portugal's most important prize for poetry in 2008, for her book Entre Dois Rios e Outras Noites, and the Italian Giuseppe Acerbi Prize in 2007.

Books

Poetry

United States