Women Creators: Representations of Space and Place in Women's Writing

Alinne Balduino P. Fernandes; Melissa Sihra

doi:10.5007/2175-8026.2025.e107347

Authors

Alinne Balduino P. Fernandes Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0979-6036
Melissa Sihra Trinity College Dublin https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4958-2406

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2025.e107347

Abstract

Introduction to the dossier "Women Creators: Representations of Space and Place in Women’s Writing," guest edited by Dr. Alinne Balduino P. Fernandes (Modern Languages, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil), and Dr. Melissa Sihr (Drama Studies, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland), in celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the first issue of Ilha do Desterro exclusively dedicated to women writers. The 1985 issue, Women Writers/Mulheres Escritoras, was edited by Professor Susana Bornéo Funck, one of the pioneers in women studies at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, and the pioneer lecturer in women’s writing UFSC’s Modern Languages department (Departamento de Língua e Literatura Estrangeiras).

Author Biographies

Alinne Balduino P. Fernandes, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

Senior Lecturer in Irish and British Literatures and Translation. Fernandes holds a PhD from Queen’s University Belfast. She is Chair of Núcleo de Estudos Irlandeses (NEI), the Irish Studies Centre at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC), sponsored by Global Ireland – Emigrant Support Programme. Fernandes is also the Coordinator UFSC’s English Postgraduate Programme as well as of the Radio Drama Lab, sponsored by Brazil’s National Research Council (CNPq). She is author of the short-story collection Quando minha avó morreu (Patuá, 2024), editor of Teorias da tradução de 1990 a 2019 (EdUFSC, 2023), and coeditor of Theatre, Performance and Commemoration: Staging Crisis, Memory and Nationhood (Bloomsbury, 2023). She is also a theatre translator, dramaturg, and a writer. Fernandes is a CNPq Laureate (Bolsista de Produtividade em Pesquisa).

Melissa Sihra, Trinity College Dublin

Associate Professor of Drama at Trinity College Dublin and Co-Director of the Lady Gregory-Yeats Autumn Gathering at Coole Park. She is author of Marina Carr: Pastures of the Unknown and editor of Women in Irish Drama: A Century of Authorship and Representation both published by Palgrave Macmillan. She is Co-Series Editor, with Elaine Aston, of the Cambridge University Press “Women Theatre Makers” Elements Series. She is a Dramaturg and has worked at the Abbey Theatre and on productions of Marina Carr, Brian Friel, GB Shaw and Beckett in the United States. She researches and teaches Irish Theatre, Playwriting and Women, feminism and gender in performance. She is a former President of the Irish Society for Theatre Research (ISTR).