Born in 1973, Margarida Vale de Gato is a poet, playwright, essayist, and lecturer. She has been writing and publishing poetry since the age of sixteen. Her first collection, Mulher ao Mar [Woman Overboard] (2010), was also the opening volume of a work in progress that continues to shape her oeuvre. The most recent version (the fourth) was published in 2023 under the title Mulher ao Mar e Corsárias (Woman Overboard and Piratesses). Her poetry is characterised by its reflections on the contemporary world and on the place of female voice(s), frequently drawing on quotations and allusions, revisiting canonical poetic forms in order to transgress and expand them. As a literary translator, Margarida Vale de Gato has built an extensive body of work, making accessible in Portuguese a wide range of canonical texts from English and French. She has also published essays and co-edited volumes such as Translated Poe (2014) and Natural in Verso (2015). A specialist in the work of Edgar Allan Poe—the principal subject of her doctoral thesis—she teaches American Studies and Literary Translation at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon, and is a researcher at the Centre for English Studies at the same institution.
You may find her poetry in…
First Person: Writers and Artists in Revolution is an anthology of poetry and and visual artworks that seeks to shed light on the path taken by women, in literature and art, on their journey towards emancipation and self-affirmation.
Primera persona: escritoras y artistas mujeres en revolución es una antología poética y visual que pretende alumbrar el camino de emancipación y afirmación de las mujeres en la literatura y el arte.
