Written and imagined by Bruno Vieira Amaral and Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida
The discussion was moderated by Tito Couto and featured readings by Patrícia Queirós
and Pedro Frias
BABELL hosted a conversation between writers Bruno Vieira Amaral and Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida, in a session moderated by Tito Couto and accompanied by readings by Patrícia Queirós and Pedro Frias. Throughout the event, the two authors shared with the audience different perspectives on the creative process and the role of imagination in their individual writing processes.
One of the central moments of the conversation focused on how each writer relates to the act of writing. Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida explained that she views literary creation as a free-flowing process, without a predefined structure, allowing each text to find its own path. “I don’t make plans regarding the revision of my texts, and so they gradually take on the form they are meant to take,” she emphasized.
For his part, Bruno Vieira Amaral shared the importance of reading in discovering a literary identity. For the writer, it is through engagement with the works of other authors that each writer finds the path to developing a voice of their own. “It is by reading other authors that I arrive at a voice. It makes us seek out our own perspective,” he said.
The conversation also touched on imagination and the way it influences writing. Bruno Vieira Amaral argued that imagination does not arise solely from the invention of worlds or stories, but also from the observation of reality, emphasizing that imagination is the act of sitting down to describe what is right in front of us—and from the moment we begin to observe, imagination is already at work.
This idea reinforced one of the session’s main messages: writing arises both from experience and from the unique way in which each author observes and interprets the world around them.
More than just a conversation about literature, this gathering at BABELL was an invitation to think of the writing process as an ongoing exercise in discovery, where reading, imagination, and listening intersect to give rise to new stories and new ways of looking at the world.
