Born during the “failed attempt of Caldas”, Patrícia Portela is a writer and performance maker born in 1974 in Lisbon, just a little before the Carnation Revolution. She lived in Macau, Denmark, Finland, Holand and for a long period in Belgium and has since 2023 settled back in Portugal. She has a BA in set and costume design by the high school of theatre and cinema of Lisbon, a Masters of Arts in scenography and dramaturgy of space from the University of Utrecht and Saint Martins college of art in Antwerp, a post-graduation in theatricality and performativity from APT in Antwerp, a film stage at the European film school in Ebeltoft, Denmark, and a Masters in Philosophy of the University of Leuven, Belgium. Since 2003 she has worked on her own performances and installations in collaboration with international artists. She has achieved national and international recognition for her “unusual and peculiar body of work” (Miguel Real in JL) and is considered one of the most daring artists and innovative writers of her generation. She won the Revelation Prize in 1994 for her creative work in performance and cinema, the Prize Teatro na Década for T5 in 1999, the Gulbenkian Foundation Prize Madalena de Azeredo Perdigão for the performance Flatland I in 2004 and was one of the 5 finalists of the Sonae Media Art Prize 2015 with her installation Parasomnia, amongst other prizes. She has been invited to participate in the prestigious International Writing Program (IWP) at the University of Iowa in 2013 and to be the first Outreach Fellow. She was the first literary resident in Berlin in 2016, sponsored by the Portuguese Embassy in Germany/Instituto Camões and the second literary resident in Madrid, sponsored by the Portuguese Embassy in Spain. She lectures “dramaturgy and space” and “image” regularly at Universities and cultural centers in Portugal and abroad. She is the author of several novels, short stories and performances, such as Dias úteis (2016, considered one of the books of the year by several reviewers), Banquet (finalist at the Novel Prize of APE 2012) or Hiphen (Prize Ciranda 2022). She is a chronicle writer for the prestigious Jornal de Letras since 2017 and was for a short period for the National Radio Antena 1 in 2019. She has kept a theatre in Viseu, at the center region of Portugal open and busy during the pandemic between March 2020 and February 2022, she collaborated with the independent program ROTA CLANDESTINA between 2022 and 2023 and she is presently the artistic director of Rua das Gaivotas 6 in the heart of Lisbon, an independent space for emerging artists.