This year’s edition became global, virtual, and open to Brazilian authors of any genres or literary styles, from anywhere in the world. A total of 130 Brazilian writers participated in 20 live sessions across all literary genres. To watch, just visit the Facebook pages of Focus Brasil.
The goal is to stimulate and promote Brazilian literature, culture, and the arts of Brazil abroad, as well as to contribute to the preservation of the memory of Brazilian writers and support literary initiatives and events developed by the Focus Brasil Foundation.
According to the Focus Brasil NY Coordinator, Nereide Santa Rosa, increasingly, in this scenario we currently live in, reading books and writing texts have become more present in our lives as they represent people’s feelings and emotions, as well as facilitating access to more knowledge and research.
“Creating spaces for the presentation and dissemination of the literary and intellectual production of Brazilian writers is always necessary as it significantly contributes to the appreciation, recognition, and dissemination of Brazilian Literature,” declares Nereide Rosa.
She explains that all Brazilian writers registered for free on the website http://newyork.focusbrasil.org/inscricao/ and registrations remain open already thinking about the next event in 2021. From the registrations, the event organization prepared the themes of the lectures and the testimonies of the writers.
Among the highlights of this year was the Instituto Brasil Solidário, which was honored by the International Academy of Brazilian Literature and Focus Brasil New York with the “2020 Brazilian International Literature Recognition Award” on September 12.
According to the President of IBS, Luis Salvatore, the award represented an important recognition of IBS’s work, which in its more than 20 years of trajectory has been developing reading incentive actions with a strong social impact both inside and outside the school environment.
“The encouragement of reading has been present in IBS’s actions since 2001. We know the importance of the library as a true ‘heart of possibilities’, so all our training has some link to reading work, reinforcing that interdisciplinary activities can be carried out to attract the reading public. The proposal allows for the construction of literary spaces with reused materials, in addition to playful and creative reading activities, in a simple and dynamic way, enabling the student’s protagonism throughout the learning process,” emphasizes Luis.
The Instituto Brasil Solidário promotes reading actions in culturally underprivileged cities, including the establishment of complete libraries, training programs in reading mediation for educators and youth, and literary stimulus projects instituted as public policies, among them the movement “30 Minutes for Reading”, “Literary São João”, and “Reading Angels”.
Along this path, more than 273 libraries have been set up with around 1 million books distributed for free, 1,032 schools worked with, 47,255 students benefited, and 16,122 teachers trained, in 177 cities across the 5 regions of Brazil.
VIVIANE FAVER
Journalist
vfaver@gmail.com