LUÍSA COSTA GOMES, born June 1954, in Lisbon, Portugal.
I graduated in Philosophy in 1976, in Lisbon. I write short stories, novels, plays, film scripts and I have held weekly columns in several national newspapers and magazines since the 1980´s. I have published 8 novels, 7 collections of short stories, 2 librettoes, one of them for the opera WHITE RAVEN, by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson; I wrote 12 plays, most of them staged in Lisbon and Porto. Currently I am resident playwright and dramatist at Teatro do Bairro, in Lisbon. THE MACBETHS, The Greater Tragedy, a play built with some other Shakespearean texts, opened in Lisbon, August 2018. THE BIG FROST, monologue, a play (not an adaptation) built with the text of Virginia Woolf´s Orlando, opened in Lisbon in October 2017. My novel FIORETTI OF SISTER NOTHING (Life of a Non-Saint) came out in April 2018 and ON THE COAST (A memoir of life where I am living it), in June 2018.
I directed and edited for ten years the only Portuguese short story magazine Ficções (2000-2010), now wholly digitalized and available online at the Digital Library of the Camões National Institute. I taught Creative Writing at Universidade Lusófona and Literary Writing in a Graduate Program (Arts of Writing) at Universidade Nova, Lisbon. I taught Playwriting Workshops in Lisbon and Oporto (ACT, Acting School and Oporto´s National Theatre).
I have translated plays, fiction and films from English, Italian, Spanish and French. I translated numerous authors, amongst them William Shakespeare, Marguerite Duras, Gertrude Stein, Alfred Jarry, etc.
Awards: Prize .dst Group for my novel Cláudio e Constantino, a novel in paradoxes, in 2015 . Prize Fernando Namora for Best Portuguese Novel for Ilusão (“Illusion or What you will”) in 2010. Prize Portuguese Pen Club 2010 for the same novel. Prize Camilo Castelo Branco, for a Short Story Collection, “Contos Outra Vez”, awarded by the Portuguese Writers Association (Associação Portuguesa de Escritores) in 1998. Award Eça de Queirós (City of Lisbon, awarded by City Hall) for the book of plays Ubardo and My Australia in 1995. Prize Máxima Magazine or Literature in 1994, for the novel Olhos Verdes (“Green Eyes”). Literary Award of the D. Dinis Foundation (Casa de Mateus) for the epistolary novel O pequeno mundo (“Small world”) in 1990.
In theatre I worked with Robert Wilson/Philip Glass (as librettist), Ricardo Pais (as dramaturgist), Ana Tamen (as playwright), Nuno Carinhas (as playwright), Luís Bragança Gil (composer), António Pires (as playwright, dramaturgist and co-director), etc.
Residencies: 2009, Ledig House, Hudson Valley, New York; 2010, Bellagio Rockefeller Center at Lake Como, Italy; 2011, Bogliasco Foundation, at Bogliasco, Genoa, Italy; 2012, Château de Lavigny, Lausanne, Switzerland; 2013, Ubersetzershaus Looren, Zurich, Switzerland; 2017, Bogliasco Foundation.
Recent publications:
FIORETTI DI SOROR NIENTE/ Fleurettes de Soeur Rien/ Florinhas de Soror Nada/ Little Flowers of Sister Nothing, novel, 2018 (at Dom Quixote). Fioretti is built as a parody of a hagiography (a saint´s life), and it narrates the loss of faith in the Catholic Church and ensuing pleasurable life of the non-saint Teresa.
VIDA DE RAMÓN, (Life of Ramón), (first edition 1991) (new edition, re-written, 2016) fictional biography of the Catalan philosopher and missionary of the XIIIth century, Ramón Llull (translated into French by Gallimard, in 1995 as “Vie de Ramón, docteur Illuminé”; there are also a Spanish translation, a Catalán translation and a Dutch translation)
CLAÚDIO e CONSTANTINO, a rustic novel in paradoxes, (Dom Quixote, 2014). A fictional philosophical wandering through the major paradoxes of Western thought, mainly the ones that tackle with identity, self-reference and knowledge.
EDUCAÇÃO PARA A TRISTEZA, An education on Sadness/ Éducation pour la Tristesse, 1998 (ed. Presença), translated into Spanish as Educación para la Tristeza in 2005. An Education on Sadness deals with utopian, fourierist and visionary architecture. It is the saga of a family of four generations of architects living in the heart of the country in Portugal.
Recently staged plays:
MACBETHS, dramaturgy, with the texts of Macbeths and other plays by William Shakespeare, Ruínas do Carmo, staged by António Pires, August 2018.
THE GREAT FROST, dramaturgy, with the text of Orlando, by Virginia Woolf, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, staged by Carlos Pimenta, 2017.
CABARET ALEMÃO (GERMAN CABARET), dramaturgy, translation and adaptation of songs by leading Jewish German composers– Holländer, Wedekind, Brecht, Eisler, Nelson, etc. Teatro do Bairro, Lisbon, April to June 2014; at Teatro Municipal de Almada, October 2016, re-staged.
DEPOIS DA REVOLUÇÃO (AFTER THE REVOLUTION) dramaturgy, musical theatre, celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Revolution of April, Teatro do Bairro, Lisbon, April 2014, re-staged Teatro Municipal de Almada.
ACTOR IMPERFEITO/UNPERFECT ACTOR, bilingual play in English and Portuguese, a play in sonnets, built entirely with Shakespeare´s Sonnets (Lisbon, December 2013 and Oporto, TECA, 2014).
And the very incomplete article in Wikipedia
Between 2000 e 2010 I edited the short story magazine Ficções (now online at the Centro Virtual Camões)
I graduated in Philosophy in 1976, in Lisbon. I write short stories, novels, plays, film scripts and I have held weekly columns in several national newspapers and magazines since the 1980´s. I have published 8 novels, 7 collections of short stories, 2 librettoes, one of them for the opera WHITE RAVEN, by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson; I wrote 12 plays, most of them staged in Lisbon and Porto. Currently I am resident playwright and dramatist at Teatro do Bairro, in Lisbon. THE MACBETHS, The Greater Tragedy, a play built with some other Shakespearean texts, opened in Lisbon, August 2018. THE BIG FROST, monologue, a play (not an adaptation) built with the text of Virginia Woolf´s Orlando, opened in Lisbon in October 2017. My novel FIORETTI OF SISTER NOTHING (Life of a Non-Saint) came out in April 2018 and ON THE COAST (A memoir of life where I am living it), in June 2018.
I directed and edited for ten years the only Portuguese short story magazine Ficções (2000-2010), now wholly digitalized and available online at the Digital Library of the Camões National Institute. I taught Creative Writing at Universidade Lusófona and Literary Writing in a Graduate Program (Arts of Writing) at Universidade Nova, Lisbon. I taught Playwriting Workshops in Lisbon and Oporto (ACT, Acting School and Oporto´s National Theatre).
I have translated plays, fiction and films from English, Italian, Spanish and French. I translated numerous authors, amongst them William Shakespeare, Marguerite Duras, Gertrude Stein, Alfred Jarry, etc.
Awards: Prize .dst Group for my novel Cláudio e Constantino, a novel in paradoxes, in 2015 . Prize Fernando Namora for Best Portuguese Novel for Ilusão (“Illusion or What you will”) in 2010. Prize Portuguese Pen Club 2010 for the same novel. Prize Camilo Castelo Branco, for a Short Story Collection, “Contos Outra Vez”, awarded by the Portuguese Writers Association (Associação Portuguesa de Escritores) in 1998. Award Eça de Queirós (City of Lisbon, awarded by City Hall) for the book of plays Ubardo and My Australia in 1995. Prize Máxima Magazine or Literature in 1994, for the novel Olhos Verdes (“Green Eyes”). Literary Award of the D. Dinis Foundation (Casa de Mateus) for the epistolary novel O pequeno mundo (“Small world”) in 1990.
In theatre I worked with Robert Wilson/Philip Glass (as librettist), Ricardo Pais (as dramaturgist), Ana Tamen (as playwright), Nuno Carinhas (as playwright), Luís Bragança Gil (composer), António Pires (as playwright, dramaturgist and co-director), etc.
Residencies: 2009, Ledig House, Hudson Valley, New York; 2010, Bellagio Rockefeller Center at Lake Como, Italy; 2011, Bogliasco Foundation, at Bogliasco, Genoa, Italy; 2012, Château de Lavigny, Lausanne, Switzerland; 2013, Ubersetzershaus Looren, Zurich, Switzerland; 2017, Bogliasco Foundation.
Recent publications:
FIORETTI DI SOROR NIENTE/ Fleurettes de Soeur Rien/ Florinhas de Soror Nada/ Little Flowers of Sister Nothing, novel, 2018 (at Dom Quixote). Fioretti is built as a parody of a hagiography (a saint´s life), and it narrates the loss of faith in the Catholic Church and ensuing pleasurable life of the non-saint Teresa.
VIDA DE RAMÓN, (Life of Ramón), (first edition 1991) (new edition, re-written, 2016) fictional biography of the Catalan philosopher and missionary of the XIIIth century, Ramón Llull (translated into French by Gallimard, in 1995 as “Vie de Ramón, docteur Illuminé”; there are also a Spanish translation, a Catalán translation and a Dutch translation)
CLAÚDIO e CONSTANTINO, a rustic novel in paradoxes, (Dom Quixote, 2014). A fictional philosophical wandering through the major paradoxes of Western thought, mainly the ones that tackle with identity, self-reference and knowledge.
EDUCAÇÃO PARA A TRISTEZA, An education on Sadness/ Éducation pour la Tristesse, 1998 (ed. Presença), translated into Spanish as Educación para la Tristeza in 2005. An Education on Sadness deals with utopian, fourierist and visionary architecture. It is the saga of a family of four generations of architects living in the heart of the country in Portugal.
Recently staged plays:
MACBETHS, dramaturgy, with the texts of Macbeths and other plays by William Shakespeare, Ruínas do Carmo, staged by António Pires, August 2018.
THE GREAT FROST, dramaturgy, with the text of Orlando, by Virginia Woolf, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, staged by Carlos Pimenta, 2017.
CABARET ALEMÃO (GERMAN CABARET), dramaturgy, translation and adaptation of songs by leading Jewish German composers– Holländer, Wedekind, Brecht, Eisler, Nelson, etc. Teatro do Bairro, Lisbon, April to June 2014; at Teatro Municipal de Almada, October 2016, re-staged.
DEPOIS DA REVOLUÇÃO (AFTER THE REVOLUTION) dramaturgy, musical theatre, celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Revolution of April, Teatro do Bairro, Lisbon, April 2014, re-staged Teatro Municipal de Almada.
ACTOR IMPERFEITO/UNPERFECT ACTOR, bilingual play in English and Portuguese, a play in sonnets, built entirely with Shakespeare´s Sonnets (Lisbon, December 2013 and Oporto, TECA, 2014).
And the very incomplete article in Wikipedia
Between 2000 e 2010 I edited the short story magazine Ficções (now online at the Centro Virtual Camões)
