Professor Maria Irene Ramalho from the University of Coimbra won the Vergílio Ferreira 2024 Prize from the University of Évora today, for her contribution to “the dialog between Portuguese literature and Anglo-Saxon literatures”, the Alentejo academy revealed.
A retired full professor in the Anglo-American Studies Section of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures of the Faculty of Letters of the University of Coimbra, Maria Irene Ramalho has been an international affiliate of the Department of Comparative Literature of the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 1999, where she teaches regularly as a visiting professor.
In a statement sent to the Lusa news agency, the University of Évora (UÉ) announced that the jury, meeting today, unanimously decided to award the prize to Maria Irene Ramalho, “for her contribution to increasing the dialogue between Portuguese literature and Anglo-Saxon literatures and in general for the internationalization of Portuguese literature”.
In this edition, the jury for the Vergílio Ferreira Literary Prize was chaired by University of Évora professor Antonio Sáez Delgado, accompanied by university lecturers Joana Matos Frias, from the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon, António Apolinário Lourenço, from the University of Coimbra, Elisa Nunes Esteves, from the School of Social Sciences of the University of Évora, and literary critic Ricardo Viel.
Established by the UÉ in 1996 to pay tribute to the writer after whom it is named, the Vergílio Ferreira Literary Prize is intended to award an annual prize for the literary work of a Portuguese-speaking author who is relevant in the fields of fiction and/or essays.
In 2023, the Vergílio Ferreira Prize honored the Angolan writer Ondjaki. In the first edition, the writer Maria Velho da Costa was awarded the prize.
