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Al Berto (January 11, 1948 - June 13, 1997)
Al Berto, pseudonym of Alberto Raposo Tavares Pidwell (Coimbra, January 11, 1948 - Lisbon, 13 June 1997) was a poet, painter, editor and animator of the Portuguese cultural environment.He was born into a family of the high-middle class (of English origin by the paternal grandmother). When he was one year old the family moved to Alentejo, and he spent there his childhood and adolescence until the family decided to send him to study art at the Antonio Arroyo School in Lisbon.
In 1967 he enrolled at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture et des Arts Visuels (La Cambre) in Brussels, Belgium.-
After completing the course, he decided to abandon painting in 1971 and devoting himself entirely to writing. He returned to Portugal in 1974 and there he wrote the first book entirely in Portuguese, À Procura do Vento num Jardim d'Agosto.
O Medo, an anthology of his work from 1974 to 1986, was first published in 1987. This has become the most important collection of his work and his final artistic testament, being added in subsequent editions new writings by the author, even after his death. At the moment of his death he left incomplete the text for an opera, for a photography book on Portugal and a "fake autobiography," as the author himself said.
He died of lymphoma on June 13, 1997.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Berto
Poet Al Berto (the pseudonym of Alberto Raposo Pidwell Tavares) is a foundational figure in the emergence of a "queer" literature in Portugal. Al Berto's poetic work is a product of a "literary series" in which a gay male subjectivity has traditionally appeared as a marginalized and invisible figure in its difference vis-a-vis mainstream culture. However, the notion of "queer" implies not only a marginalized gay subjectivity, but also a way of being in the world, which, by virtue ot its difference, is capable of adopting a critical stance in relationship to mainstream culture. Thus, my appropriation of the term "queer" will have political implications for the analysis of Portuguese literature, where canonical criticism has completely ignored the subject of homosexuality. --Al Berto, In Memoriam, Mario Cesar Lugarinho in Lusosex( Further Readings )
Henri Ghéon (March 15, 1875 – June 13, 1944), born Henri Vangeon in Bray-sur-Seine, Seine-et-Marne, was a French playwright, novelist, poet and critic. Brought up by a devout Roman Catholic mother, he lost his faith in his early teens, while still at the Lycée in Sens. Among the factors that brought this about, one stood out in his own mind: at school religion was taught without life or understanding. Ghéon did not miss it. As F. J. Sheed says, "His was a happy atheism." He replaced Catholicism with a semi-pagan cult of beauty in all its forms — nature, literature, music, painting. (picture: Henri Ghéon by Jean Veber)
I asked to all the authors joining the GayRomLit convention in Atlanta in October (
Cowboy's Challenge [Cowboys of Snow Lake 4] by Susan Laine .jpg)
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