Júlia Portes

Júlia Portes was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1995 and is a writer and actress. Her debut novel, A SKY ACROSS THE FACE (Nau, 2022), was a finalist for the Jabuti Prize and was adapted for the stage. She holds a master’s degree in performing arts from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and moves fluidly between literature, playwriting, theatre, and audiovisual work. Since 2020, she has led writing workshops and immersive courses. I CAME TO SAY I’M NO LONGER COMING is her second novel.

I CAME TO SAY I'M NO LONGER COMING (VIM PRA DIZER QUE NÃO VENHO MAIS)

Célia and Ondina are two friends in their seventies and live in the same building in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro. They lead busy lives at an age when people are expected to fear boredom, death, and the possibility that nothing good will happen to them again. Célia never had children, is retired, and, with progressively worsening hearing loss, is awaiting the outcome of a labor lawsuit in hopes of changing her life. Ondina, meanwhile, is a veteran actress who teaches theatre at the university and gets by however she can to make ends meet at the end of the month. One day, while paying her little dog's vet bill, she discovers that the savings she'd managed to put aside were used without her consent by her daughter Fábia, who lives in Berlin.

Even in the face of loneliness, the difficulty of forming bonds after one's formative years, financial troubles, the consequences of having or not having had children, and health issues, Ondina and Célia never give in to the stereotypes society imposes on old age, especially for women. They prove that we all feel young in the face of something new. Each with her own quirks, the two friends win us over with an unshakable charisma. For writer Veronica Stigger, who wrote the flap of the Brazilian edition, they "are so alive that we feel as though we've known them from somewhere." And that is the great strength of Júlia Portes's writing, a novelist, playwright, and actress who handles language and everyday dramatic tension with rare sensitivity. The novel has a theatrical eye and a delicate humour that make it impossible not to grow fond of the characters and the heart of the story.

I CAME TO SAY I'M NO LONGER COMING (or Little Money, the title Ondina would have preferred for the book) is a novel whose freshness reinvigorates our ideas about aging and about family and romantic relationships. We come to see that friendship among women offers a real path to joy in later life, since, as Célia puts it, it provides a "freedom that blood ties will never give."

Publication/Status: To be published by Fósforo (Brazil) in February 2027. [224 pages]

English sample available.

A SKY ACROSS THE FACE (O CÉU NO MEIO DA CARA)

Set during a wake, A SKY ACROSS THE FACE unfolds around the body of Marília, a woman who died before the time. Two women orbit her corpse: Laura, her daughter, and Carmelita, her mother. Laura, a young necro-makeup artist, decides to prepare her own mother’s body in front of the family. To her, this gesture feels like a fairer ritual than standing still, greeting mourners, while her mother lies dead. Carmelita, seventy-two years old, is catatonic. Watching her granddaughter apply makeup to her daughter’s body returns her to a chain of memories, becoming an attempt to face this new stage of life — old age. The tangled thoughts of these two women form both a retreat and a leap: a movement backward that allows the creation of a future.

Bound by maternity yet separated by generations, they are drawn into an intimate confrontation with memory, grief, and the ancestry that runs through the women of the same family. A SKY ACROSS THE FACE surprises the reader with an engaging story, capable of making one laugh and cry through its dramatic, fast-moving narrative, with sharp humor and courageous irreverence in its approach to maternity. A finalist to the Jabuti Prize of best debut novel in 2023.

Publication/Status: Published by Nau (Brazil) in 2022. [92 pages]

Full English translation available.