Talking about writers who are doctors, or doctors who are writers is an interesting topic, but not an easy one. In the history of world literature, there are many cases of medical writers who, out of passion, talent or curiosity, followed, in addition to their profession legitimized by society, a not so linear path, that of literature. In this space, we intend to get to know a little more about the writers and their works and how they intertwine or not in their path through medicine.

In this month of March, the month of Women, in which we debuted this new column, it was easy to think that it would have to be about a female medical writer. I quickly remembered a book I read about two, three years ago, “A mulher do chapéu de palha”(The woman with the straw hat), a reflective and nostalgic book and how I found it curious to have been written by a Portuguese woman who was a doctor by profession. This woman was called Graça Pina de Morais. She was born in Porto in the 1920s, also the daughter of a writer, and she graduated in Medicine in 1955, having dedicated herself to this profession for many years. In parallel, she published her books, always with a very intimate, simple and absorbing tone, about everyday life and thoughts. She had her books published when she was still alive, except, interestingly, “A mulher do chapéu de palha”, which was published only in 2000, 8 years after her death. Of her, it is said that she was shy and did not join the literary circles of the time. Was it due to her personality? Or the fact that the world of writers was, at that time in Portugal, an only men world?

Anyway, dare to read something different, from a woman who was courageously in two worlds, Literature and Medicine.

Published by Antígona:

Sónia Teixeira
Editorial Team