An announcement was made in the Porto Metropolitan Area district concerning the Onomatopeia — Festival de Literatura Infantojuvenil de Valongo, where the jury, comprising Álvaro Magalhães, Adélia Carvalho, and Margarida Noronha, unanimously selected winners after reviewing approximately 200 works by authors from Portugal, Spain, Angola, Brazil, and Colombia.
The shared victory was attributed to both writers’ “truly universal poetic narratives,” as explained by the jury to the Lusa agency.
Raquel Patriarca submitted her book ‘Os avós são as pessoas preferidas dos pássaros’ for the award. Illustrated by Sérgio Condeço and published by Nuvem de Letras under the Penguin Random House group, the book unfolds “with an engaging rhythm, movement, and sensitivity, employing language that captures the complete reality and essential bond between grandparents and grandchildren.”
Born in Benguela, Angola, in 1974, Patriarca holds a degree in History, a Master’s in Modern Cultural History, and a Ph.D. in History of the Book from the University of Porto’s Faculty of Letters. She is an author of books about the history of Porto, a collection of poetry, and children’s stories included in the National Reading Plan. Alongside her writing career, she also works as a librarian, documentalist, researcher, and lecturer.
Francisca Camelo’s entry, ‘A casa invisível’, features illustrations by Carolina Celas and is published by APCC — Associação para a Promoção Cultural da Criança. The book is described by the jury as having a “sensitive and intimate narrative,” with protagonists that readers can easily relate to, set in everyday situations reflecting deep affection through gestures of devotion, sharing, and protection.
Born in Porto in 1990, Camelo has an academic background in Visual Arts and Psychology from a local university. She divides her time between Porto and Berlin. Her poetry has been featured in various magazines, and she is the co-founder of the ‘online’ platform ‘A bacana’, which promotes literature and art.
In addition to the €8,000 shared between the main winners, the 2025 Álvaro Magalhães Iberian Prize jury also awarded an honorable mention worth €3,000 to Rita Taborda Duarte’s book ‘Gaspar, com os pés bem assentes na lua’. Featuring illustrations by Sebastião Peixoto, this publication by editor Caminho is noted for its “rich and inventive vocabulary,” presenting “a protagonist with multiple facets, complex, contradictory, special, and infinite.”
Rita Taborda Duarte, who turned 52 on April 26, previously won the Branquinho da Fonseca Expresso Gulbenkian Prize in 2003 for her first children’s book, ‘A verdadeira história da Alice’. She holds a degree in Languages and Literature from the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon, where she also completed a Master’s in Literary Theory. Duarte works as a teacher and literary critic.
