Why Do We Tell Stories?
Why Do We Tell Stories?
Why do we tell stories? This is the motto for a three-way conversation with those who tell stories, whether fictional, real, or a cross between the two. We reflect on the human need to create narratives, not only to represent the world and its past, but to reveal it in all its possibilities, and make it live in the unique way that, sometimes, only literature can reveal. Telling stories is like planting seeds, it activates everyday gestures of memory, care, persistence. During this conversation, we also explore the personal and political importance of fiction, a place where words become resistance and the imaginary a territory of contagion. The meeting brings together three writers who explore these paths through the writing of Susana Moreira Marques, author of literary non-fiction books, Inês Brasão, sociologist and historian, who has recovered the forgotten history of slave labour, and Inês Lampreia, author of No tempo dos Super Heróis (In The Time of Superheroes) (2024) who, based on memories told by her grandparents, evokes the life and resistance of the Alentejo countryside in the mid-20th century.
22 JAN 2026
THU 19:00
Free entry*
Duration 2h
*By pre-booking or collecting your ticket 15 minutes before the event (limited to the venue's to capacity).
On the day of the event, pre-bookings that have not been collected will be made available 15 minutes before the start of the event.
For personal reasons, Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida will be unable to attend. The conference will feature the participation of writer Susana Moreira Marques, who will contribute to this conversation based on her work and career.
BIOGRAPHIES
Inês Brasão has been a Sociology Professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria since 1997 and holds a PhD in Sociology and Historical Economics from NOVA FCSH. In 1998, she received the Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcelos Prize. In 2011, she was awarded the Maria Lamas Prize for her study of domestic servitude in Portugal, which was published as the book O Tempo das Criadas. Since 2020, she has coordinated the Digital Archive of the History of Domestic Servile Work – Memórias de Servidão – DHLAB-IHC-NOVA FCSH.
Among other books, she has published Fêmea, uma História Ilustrada das Mulheres, Dons e Disciplinas do Corpo Feminino, and Hotel, os Bastidores. Her research interests span social history, labour history, and women’s history. She is a senior researcher at IHC (NOVA FCSH) and a collaborator at CITUR (IPL).
Inês Lampreia is a writer of fiction and poetic prose. In 2011, she won the Casa do Alentejo prize for her short story Cinco Dedos de Cortiça. Her work has been published by various publishers, including Editora Urutau, Edições Pasárgada, Centro Mário Cláudio, Uppsala University, and Kultivera Editions, as well as in international journals.
She has developed writing and reading projects with homeless people, inmates of the Forensic Psychiatric Wing at Parque de Saúde de Lisboa, young migrants, and students in exile. Between 2016 and 2021, she was one of the lead writers in the Young Writers Lab — an international writing laboratory. More recently, she conceived a two-year writing project with participants from Bosnia, Syria, Ukraine, Turkey, and Sweden, resulting in the literary performance Gestures or Acts of Disappearance.
Her literary work articulates a critical vision of the human condition, emphasising the fissures of experience. She writes Crónicas da Pós-Normalidade for the cultural platform Coffeepaste, offering a critical reading of the present and questioning ideas of productivity, efficiency, and normality in an ever-accelerating world.
Inês Lampreia holds a degree in Journalism (ESCS-IPL) and a Master’s in Communication, Culture, and Information Technologies (ISCTE). She has worked as a journalist and, alongside her literary career, has developed a professional path in cultural communication. Since 2022, she has been a guest assistant professor at the Escola Superior de Dança (IPL), teaching the course Communication in Arts, and she provides training in cultural communication and writing across various institutional and independent organisations throughout Portugal.
Susana Moreira Marques is the author of the literary non-fiction books Agora e na hora da nossa morte (translated into English, French and Spanish), Quanto tempo tem um dia, Lenços pretos, chapéus de palha e brincos de ouro, Terceiro andar sem elevador and O quarto, a children's book. Her work has been published in magazines such as Granta, Tin House and Literary Hub, and in media outlets such as Público, Jornal de Negócios and BBC World Service. She was a columnist for Antena 1 and the newspaper Mensagem. She is co-editor of the literary non-fiction magazine Mamute. She also writes for television and film. She lives in Lisbon with her two daughters.
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