The announcement was made on the page of the Asociación de Empresarias y Empresarios del Comercio del Libro de Madrid – Gremio de Librerías, within the framework of the annual awards, which distinguish fiction, essay, poetry, comics and illustration. The Spanish writer Juan José Millás, author of “Let no one sleep”, received the Leyenda 2020 Career Award.
The book “What’s in a name”, by Ana Luísa Amaral, edited in Portugal by Assírio & Alvim, was published in Spain by Sexto Piso. “In these times of uncertainty and anguish that we live in, from walls and windows, the poetry of [Ana Luísa] Amaral welcomes us into this warm and familiar neighbourhood, which exists between two countries (Portugal and Spain), and offered us name and words in a so-called foreign language, but that is not. Thank you and congratulations”, said the Spanish jury.

The awards, created in 2000 by the bookstores of Madrid, also distinguished Elvira Lindo, in the area of fiction, by “A corazón abierto”, and Irene Vallejo, in the rehearsal area, for “El infinito en un junco”. In the field of illustration Kitty Crowther won, for the album “Madre Medusa”, and, in comics or ‘comic’, Juanjo Guarnido and Alain Ayroles, for “El Buscón en las Indias”. Published in 2017, in Portugal, “What’s in a Name” transfigures “the small everyday acts in poetic moments of great voltage, vitality and depth”, writes The Sixth Floor, in the presentation of the work, on its website, comparing Ana Luísa Amaral to the American Emily Dickinson and the Nobel Prize in Literature Wislawa Szymborska, from Poland.

Assírio & Alvim, for its part, underlines the “strangeness of English in the title”, as an expression of the “ambivalence of the relationship, that poetry has always lived, between the thing (ours, of the world) and its appointment, pointing to the multiplicity of meanings” that is in the work. “In it, in complicity, the daily life and the cosmic, the poetic and the political, the commove and irony, the amazement and indignation - in a sense, the word and the life”, concludes Assírio & Alvim.

Born in Lisbon in 1956, Ana Luísa Amaral, poet, essayist, playwright, author of children’s books and translator of authors such as John Updike, was also professor of English and American Literature and Culture at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto. She holds a PhD in Emily Dickinson’s poetry and her research areas are Comparative Poetics, Feminist Studies and Queer Studies. Her work has been translated and published in several languages and countries, having obtained several awards, such as the Correntes d’Escritas Literary Prize, the Giuseppe Acerbi Poetry Letterario Prize and the Grand Prize of Poetry of the Portuguese Writers Association.

Author

Following undertaking her university degree in English with American Literature in the UK, Cristina da Costa Brookes moved back to Portugal to pursue a career in Journalism, where she has worked at The Portugal News for 3 years. Cristina’s passion lies with Arts & Culture as well as sharing all important community-related news.

Cristina da Costa Brookes