Join us for a warm evening of readings and performances with six talented Brazilian women poets living in London. This is a rare opportunity, organised by Carnaval Press (a small press focused on Brazilian poetry) and the poets will be presenting their work in English language.
Advance tickets : eventbrite.co.uk/poetry-bossa
Alyssa Martens is a Brazilian-Canadian writer, curator, and educator based in London. She creates, produces, and curates artworks with a focus on ecology, science, and migration for installation and publication. She has been commissioned by the International Centre of Art for Social Change, the Sierra Club, BC Arts Council, the University of British Columbia, Culture Days, and the City of Vancouver. In 2023 and 2024, she was awarded two Canada Council for the Arts grants, which support her current projects: Lungs of the Earth (an immersive poetry installation, which premiered at Lobe Spatial Sound Studio in 2024) and Black Winter (her debut poetry collection). She is a member of the League of Canadian Poets, and has been a writer-in-residence at the Spitsbergen Artists Center (Norway, 2023), Sierra Club BC (Canada, 2020), and the Gullkistan Center for Creativity (Iceland, 2019).
Ega Real is a poet, novelist and actress born in Rio de Janeiro in 1998. She published her first poetry collection Cinoverbo with Douda Correria (Lisbon) in 2019. She lives in London.
Manoella Valadares is a poet and short story writer. Born in Recife (Brazil), she spent six years living in Lisbon before settling in London in 2015. A journalist by profession, her work has appeared in Folha de S.Paulo and the magazines Trip and Harper’s Bazaar. Her poetry is featured in the anthology Disease (Carnaval Press/UK), and her short stories have been published in various literary magazines. Ninguém morreu naquele outono (Telaranha Edições) is her debut book.
Muriel Floresta is an Anglo-Brazilian poet and linguist based in London. Floresta arrived in London aged 17 and still enjoys the clash and occasional dance of cultures which often find their way into her poetry. Her work is published in LitBop, Littoral, Resonance Anthology 2024, Samaritans 100 Poems of Hope and Contextual, also shortlisted at And Other Poems.
Patrizia Longhitano (she/her) is a pansexual Latinx immigrant poet and visual artist who lives in London. Some of her poems have appeared in Wet Grain, Painted Spoken, Harana Poetry Magazine, Un Nuevo Sol anthology and the album ‘We Will Keep On’. Her poetry videos are available on the Poetry Translation Centre website and on her personal YouTube channel. Some of her performances, workshops and multimedia poetry installations have appeared at the Southbank, TEXTUS exhibition, Whitstable Biennale and Cheltenham Literature Festival. She hosts Venn Diagrams, a poetry event at the Torriano Meeting House and co-edited an issue of Magma poetry with Lisa Kelly. She is one of the organisers of BI+ Online Poets and BI+ London Poets groups.
Virna Teixeira was born in Fortaleza, Brazil. She is a poet, writer, translator and visual artist. She runs an independent poetry project, Carnaval Press in London since 2015. Virna had poetry collections published in Brazil, Argentine, Peru, Mexico, Portugal and the UK. She curated a couple of international poetry festivals in São Paulo. Her poems have appeared in several magazines: Poetry Wales, datableed, Painted Spoken, Zarf, Skirting Around to name some. She had a book of short stories, A Pupila, published in Brazil and Portugal. Virna studied medicine, obtained a master’s degree in medical humanities at King’s College London and works as a psychiatrist in the NHS.
