The Manuel Teixeira Gomes Municipal Library, inaugurated in Portimão on the 6th of November 1993, marks its 29th anniversary this year, associating itself with the celebrations of the centenary of the birth of the writer Agustina Bessa-Luís, through a set of initiatives the 5th.
The highlight of the program includes a meeting that will bring together the writer Mónica Baldaque, daughter of Agustina Bessa-Luís, and Pedro Mexia, literary critic and unconditional reader of the honoree.
Curated and moderated by journalist Carlos Vaz Marques, the initiative will take place from 18:00 pm on 5 November in the multipurpose room of the Municipal Library of Portimão and will address the vast literary work of Agustina, a prolific writer of novels, short stories, biographies and plays, having also worked in the editorial offices of some leading Portuguese newspapers, where he wrote chronicles, reports and interviews.
In addition to evoking Agustina Bessa-Luís, born on October 15, 1922, in Vila Meã, in the Municipality of Amarante, the meeting will have as a high point the contribution of Mónica Baldaque, who in two recent books about her mother – “As Sibilas” (2022) and “Sapatos de Corda” (2020) – drew biographical and diary sketches interspersed with her illustrations, constituting an intimate testimony of the universe and processes of the mother as a thinker and writer.
«He is not one of those authors that when we read them we read. Agustina is a kind of continent that occupies me all my life. When I read her for the first time, I got the feeling that she was an author I would read for the rest of my life. Not only because she is an author with a vast body of work, but also requires a dive into that work. Only novels will be close to 50, apart from chronicles, monographs, biographies, texts about painters and with painters... Many of these things are very difficult to find and I can say that I have a collection of almost ninety percent of Agustina Bessa's books. -Luís, which is a very high rate», describes Pedro Mexia, who wrote the preface for the reprint of the complete work that Relógio D'Água began to publish in 2017.
The 5th will also be marked by two other events, both evenings of stories dedicated to the little ones, in charge of Cláudia Fonseca and Cristina Taquelim.
First, the library's children's room receives at 11:00 am “Canto de Colo”, a session for babies up to 3 years old, accompanied by family members, in which Cláudia Fonseca will stimulate affection literacy.
In the afternoon, in the same space, and from 15:00 pm, it will be Cristina Taquelim's turn to tell minimal stories that “Fit in the ear”, so minimal that sometimes it is fun to listen and repeat, listen and repeat, so that, even when they are small, they are really in the ear.
Cláudia and Cristina, will cross the popular imagination and the author's tale, narrating tales and songs and affirming the narration in the feminine.
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