Fernanda Botelho

She was born in Porto on 1 December 1926.⁵ She studied Classical Philology at the universities of Coimbra and Lisbon and settled in Lisbon. She was a co-founder of the magazine Távola Redonda, made her debut with Coordenadas Líricas (Lyrical Coordinates) in 1951, and received the Camilo Castelo Branco Prize in 1960.³

In May 1965 she was the only woman on the jury — with Alexandre Pinheiro Torres, Augusto Abelaira, João Gaspar Simões and Manuel da Fonseca — that gave the Grand Prize for Fiction of the Portuguese Society of Writers to Luuanda, by Luandino Vieira, who was then a prisoner at Tarrafal.¹² The five jurors were questioned by the PIDE, and Pinheiro Torres, Abelaira and Manuel da Fonseca were imprisoned; the government dissolved the society, whose headquarters were raided and wrecked.¹ Twenty-five years later, Fernanda Botelho told RTP that she had never expected the controversy, let alone the regime’s reaction, and that she had voted on literary, not political, grounds.²

She was one of the defence witnesses for the authors of Novas Cartas Portuguesas (New Portuguese Letters), at the trial held at the Boa-Hora Court in 1973–1974.⁴ She died in Lisbon on 11 December 2007.³⁵