versus me
down below a samba does not call me
because it does not know my name
down below a samba does not call me
because it does not know my name
Angélica Freitas was born in Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. She is the author of three books of poetry—Rilke shake (2007), Um útero é do tamanho de um punho (2012), and Canções de atormentar (2020)—as well as a graphic novel, Guadalupe (2011), illustrated by Odyr. She received a 2010 Petrobras Cultural writer’s award and a 2020 DAAD Artists-in-Berlin residency. Her writing represents a contemporary voice in literature by women and LGBT+ authors from Brazil.
Hilary Kaplan translated Angélica Freitas’s Rilke Shake, which won the National Translation Award and Best Translated Book Award and was a finalist for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation in 2016. Her additional translations include Marília Garcia’s The Territory Is Not the Map, Paloma Vidal’s Ghosts, and poems by Ricardo Domeneck and Claudia Roquette-Pinto. She has received an NEA Translation fellowship, a PEN Translation Fund award, and a Rumos Literatura fellowship from Itaú Cultural.