Journalism was a door to ‘meet and talk with very special people’

Ana Margarida de Carvalho (left)

Portuguese journalist and author Ana Margarida de Carvalho gave a talk yesterday afternoon at the Macao Polytechnic Institute (IPM) titled “From Journalism to Literature.”

Carvalho was in town for the seventh edition of The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival.

Speaking to an audience almost exclusively composed of students enrolled in Portuguese language courses, the award-winning author addressed the impact of her 25-year journalism career on her current occupation.
“Journalism gave me [an opportunity] to get in touch with many things, sometimes with quite horrible things and tragedies… but also gave me a chance to meet and talk with very special people,” Carvalho said.

“We are influenced by all events and situations that happen throughout our lives. We are more of the past than of the present, we are layered human beings full of sediments and marks,” she said, adding that events of the past pave the road ahead for people.

When asked about her definition of a good writer or what a person must possess to achieve that status, the author said, “There are many ways to define a good writer, but one of them is the [possession] of a permanent curiosity about all things. That is, to look [into something] and never consider that [fact or thing] as ordinary [and] manage to keep the amazement effect when facing the triviality; [the] look of a child that gets amazed with the things they experience for the first time.”

She added that the “good thing” about being a writer is “to be able to [convey] that ‘first-time’ feeling, I think this is very important” and reminded her audience that books are capable of transporting people through time and space.

On the topic of her departure from journalism to focus on fiction, Carvalho said, “I was [making] a great effort and leaving behind a lot of things that I shouldn’t have left and [due to journalism] I had to skip many things that were important in my life. Then [I realized] that in fact what was requested from me was too little and that I had mental space to do other things. So when that opportunity appeared, I immediately accepted it.”

She added that she did not have any book planned or partially written while she was doing journalistic work, as that was impossible: “I was always too busy even to think about it.”

Regarding her visit to Macau, the author said she was moved to realize that “[in another] corner of the world there are people interested in learning Portuguese [who are making] a great effort to study a language that is so different from their own.”

She said she was pleased to know that these students are interested in a kind of literature that is “on the opposite end” of what they are used to.

Carvalho has received several prestigious awards from Portuguese literature and journalism associations. Her first novel “Que Importa a Fúria do Mar” (“what the fury of the sea matters”) was published in 2013 and awarded the Grand Prize for Novels from the Portuguese Writers Association .