Brazil's Paraty International Literary Festival at its 14th edition

The Paraty International Literary Festival (FLIP) kicked off yesterday (Jun. 29) on a smaller budget, but with record levels of female guest authors, and this year, it will pay tribute to poet Ana Cristina Cesar. The event runs until Sunday (Jul. 3).

Ana Cristina Cesar, or Ana C., as she was known, was an important author of her generation as part of the Poesia Marginal (“marginal poetry”) movement, a group of poets who, under strict military dictatorship censorship in the 1970s, distributed their home-printed writings. In addition to poetry, Ana C. has worked in literature criticism and translation, having translated such authors as Emily Dickinson and Katherine Mansfield.

“All the poets in younger generations--a whole generation bears the mark of Ana Cristina. There are panels featuring a number of contemporary poets and they're all keen readers of her works. Today's Brazilian literature is pulsating with her works,” said FLIP Curator Paulo Werneck.

Another highlight of the FLIP edition with the largest number of women in the event's 14 years is 2015 Nobel Prizewinner for Literature Svetlana Aleksievich, born in the Soviet Union in 1948, in a city that is now in Ukraine. In her work, the author deals with the dismantling of the USSR from the oral history of famous or anonymous protagonists.

The main stage at FLIP 2016 will feature 17 guest authors, six more than in 2015, and nearly twice the number of authors in 2014, when nine women were special guests. But even this year, men still make up a majority of authors, 22 in total. One of them is Scotland's Irvine Welsh, author of countercultural classic Trainspotting, which has earned a successful film adaptation.

Paraty is a heritage town on the south coast of Rio de Janeiro. Founded in 1667, it was an important port that shipped gold and silver mined from the neighboring state of Minas Gerais to Portugal. A national heritage site, Paraty draws thousands of Brazilian and foreign visitors tourists every year.

Translated by Mayra Borges