Ana Luísa Amaral

Prior to her death, she was preparing a book of poetry, a novel, and two books of essays. In 2021, a book of essays on her work by Peter Lang (ed. Claire Williams) titled The Most Perfect Excess: The Works of Ana Luísa Amaral was published.

Amaral's first volume of poetry, Minha Senhora de Quê (Mistress of What), was published in 1990. The collection's title alluded to Maria Teresa Horta's 1971 volume Minha Senhora de Mim (Milady of Me), thereby explicitly inscribing Amaral's work into the emergent genealogy of Portuguese women’s poetry. Since then, she has published fifteen further original collections of poetry and two volumes of collected poems, in addition to several translations (including poetry by Emily Dickinson, John Updike and Louise Glück) and books for children.

Ana Luísa Amaral (5 April 1956 – 5 August 2022) was a Portuguese poet. Professor at the University of Porto, she held a Ph.D. on the poetry of Emily Dickinson and had academic publications (in Portugal and abroad) in the areas of English and American poetry, comparative poetics, and feminist studies. She was a senior researcher and co-director of the Institute for Comparative Literature Margarida Losa. Co-author (with Ana Gabriela Macedo) of the Dictionary of Feminist Criticism (Afrontamento, 2005) and responsible for the annotated edition of New Portuguese Letters (Dom Quixote, 2010) and the coordinator of the international project New Portuguese Letters 40 Years Later, financed by FCT, that involves 10 countries and over 60 researchers. Editor of several academic books, such as Novas Cartas Portuguesas entre Portugal e o Mundo (with Marinela Freitas, Dom Quixote, 2014), or New Portuguese Letters to the World (with Marinela Freitas, Peter Lang, 2015).