In an interview with the Lusa agency, on the occasion of the anniversary, the creators and managers of the first bookstore, Paulo Brás, graduated in literature, and Ricardo Braun, from the theater, explain their desire to enter the field of publishing and also how “not yet a literature ” great concern in Portugal in writing ‘queer’ history”, defends the first.

“Not many books are published, or the ones that exist sell out and are not reprinted. Colloquiums are held and the proceedings are not published. Knowledge is not fixed, it seems that we are always starting from scratch. It creates a general idea that ‘ah, the authors don’t exist,’” he adds.

With a “quite comprehensive” catalog on Rua do Paraíso, in Porto, its universe addresses not only LGBT issues but also a bookstore with “an intersectional concern to have feminist texts, racial narratives and other types of exclusions”.

For the LGBT movement in the country, “there needs to be knowledge, research”, a job they do, through the bookstore, when going to publishers to find the books that are there, and that “maybe get lost elsewhere”, finding shelves of books. where they do not leave “after three months of exposure”, with another “lifetime”.

“Even on the part of the publishers that are going to release the things that fit in our catalog, if there is less fear, or modesty, in which the synopses are already remembered or are silent as the books talk about these issues”, Ricardo Braun.

The editions related to the theme speak of a very alert theme, in which it is not said “that people are LGBT, there is talk of forbidden loves or deviant tendencies”, a “cryptic way of characters to alienate anyone” .

As more independent publishers, Paulo Brás has already created a dialogue, be it a question about specifically ‘queer’ books that are not yet published in Portuguese, in a specially dedicated paper.

“Distributors themselves have come to realize that LGBT books are not just books with naked boys on the cover to date, or with LGBT in the synopsis. It’s not just these. A very flagrant case: in poetry, it is necessary to know the work, and sometimes the life of the poet, to know that the book can be here”, says Paulo Brás.

The possibility of editing in one’s own name is “provided for from the beginning”, but “the money for it” is still lacking.

Priority is given before taking on this risk, which they call “filling gaps in sustainability”, and applying the knowledge they add to complement and not duplicate.

it is being able to “contribute to making history” of the movement, “to show what things existed”, to “edit their impact” and bring them back, bypassing the difficulty of lack of access when some works – or authors – are out of stock.

“We don’t take it off the table” and we still won’t get the importance of helping to also try to get published without. There are unexplored areas. A Portuguese trans author? There are few editions”, adds Paulo Brás.

Among the program of the first anniversary is a series of informal sessions until Paulo Brás, by references at 18:00 on August, Mondays, about LGBTQ references in Portuguese literature.

They will be based on “a ‘non-class’ format, something more of sharing, reading, discovering”, explains Ricardo Braun, about references to Portuguese LGBT literature, which Paulo Brás took almost as “given for granted”.

“These conversations will be moderated by me and the idea is for me to bring copies and excerpts to the table, [que] we read and comment together. I’m not a teacher and then, because I don’t initially start from this more academic context, of communications, and I feel that this provides a dialogue. Even because I don’t know who comes to these conversations. I could be talking about António Botto and there is a ‘superfan’ of Botto here and I want to talk about him”, he explains.

So that it does not run the risk of being “another project that lasts two or three years and will disappear”.

“In addition, we want to intensify the programming issue, because we know that these are always important moments of intersection for the environment we want in the bookstore”, adds Paulo.

For, there are bridges with other cultural and network spaces that can be intensified, and children’s and youth can be intensified, and children’s can be intensified to be a bet for children’s books dedicated to the possibility of work “facilitating conversation”.

“So that parents, uncles, grandparents, can easily talk about these things to children. The fact that they come here because they want to talk about something to the child in the family is good, it’s great,” she adds.