_{Maria Irene Ramalho © UC_Ana Zayara}

According to information released by the Portuguese Writers Association (APE), Maria Irene Ramalho, CES researcher and retired full professor at FLUC, unanimously won the Manuel Gusmão Essay Grand Prize for her work “Fernando Pessoa e outros fingidores”.

“It is a powerful essay, reflecting the perfect mastery of both Pessoa's work, which the author knows like few others, and the critical, literary, philosophical and comparative diversity used to approach it”, says the jury in a press release.

“Fernando Pessoa e outros fingidores”, published by Tinta da China, underlines “Pessoa's intense dialogue with Anglo-American modernity”, reads the jury's justification.

In the introduction, Maria Irene Ramalho explains that all the essays gathered in the now awarded work “express the concern to understand Fernando Pessoa as a singular star spinning in the planetary system of the Western poetic universe”.

Maria Irene Ramalho, is Professor Emerita at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and researcher at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra, won the Jacinto do Prado Coelho Essay Prize in 2022, from the Portuguese section of the International Association of Literary Critics, with this same work.

According to the APE, this is the first edition of the Manuel Gusmão Grand Prize for Essays, sponsored by the Municipality of Évora, and has an endowment of 12,500 euros.

The prize intends to honour annually a work of literary essay, in Portuguese and by a Portuguese author, published in book form.

This year's jury was comprised by Carina Infante do Carmo, Helena Carvalhão Buescu and José Manuel de Vasconcelos

[Source: LUSA]

About the awardee

Maria Irene Ramalho is professor emerita of English, American Studies and Feminist Studies at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Coimbra, where she was scientific coordinator of the doctoral programmes in American Studies and Feminist Studies until September 2011. Since 1999, she is an International Affiliate of the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she teaches regularly as a visiting professor. She has published extensively, both in Portuguese and in English, on different topics of English language literature and culture (with a special focus on American poetry), as well as on American studies, comparative literature, poetic theory, cultural studies and feminist studies. Her current research interests include problems of modernity and modernism, comparative poetics, poetry and philosophy, theories of American studies and theories of feminism. She is on the editorial board of several literature and culture journals.