The Angolan poet, historian, and essayist Ana Paula Ribeiro Tavares is the winner of the 2025 Camões Prize, the most prestigious literary distinction in the Portuguese-speaking world.
Born in Lubango, Huíla, Angola, in 1952, Ana Paula Tavares is regarded as one of the most influential voices in Lusophone African literature.
Recognized for “her fruitful and coherent trajectory of aesthetic creation and, in particular, her restoration of the dignity of poetry,” the jury emphasized that “with the diction of her lyricism without evasive concessions and with the free commitments of chronicle and narrative fiction production, Ana Paula Tavares’ work also gains a relevant anthropological dimension from a historical perspective.”
The Camões Prize, established by the governments of Portugal and Brazil in 1989, honors authors whose entire body of work contributes to the enrichment of the Portuguese language’s literary heritage. She is the third Angolan writer to receive the Camões Prize, following Pepetela (1997) and Luandino Vieira (2006).
A historian by training, her poetry reflects a profound connection to the Angolan landscape and collective history, combining myth, oral tradition, and lyrical intimacy to explore themes of love, displacement, and resistance. Her writing continues to bridge personal and collective memory, reaffirming her commitment to cultural heritage and the feminine voice within African modernity.
Reflecting on her writing, Tavares once said, “The poetry of place was a long apprenticeship. It was not inside me. This was a language I had to learn.” Among her most celebrated works are Ritos de Passagem (1985), O Lago da Lua (1999), Ex-votos (2003), Manual para Amantes Desesperados (2007), and Como Veias Finas na Terra (2010).
Some of Tavares’s works have been translated into English, including selections in Words Without Borders and Lyrikline, translated by Richard Zenith, expanding her reach to international audiences.
With this recognition, Ana Paula Ribeiro Tavares joins a distinguished lineage of Camões laureates, reaffirming Angola’s vital contribution to the global Lusophone literary canon.
PAJ/Staff
