Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida

Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida (b. Luanda, 1982) is a writer. Her stories seek to restore an overlooked sensibility, exploring hospitality, justice and human existence defeated by history and contingency. Her books, notably Luanda, Lisboa, Paraíso, A Visão das Plantas and Livro da Doença, have received several awards and distinctions, including the prémio Oceanos, the Grande Prémio de Romance e Novela da Associação Portuguesa de Escritores and the prémio D. Diniz da Casa de Mateus. In 2023, she received the prémio FLUL Alumni, awarded by the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, where she completed her doctorate. Published in seventeen countries, her work is required reading for the university entrance examinations of the Universidade de São Paulo, the Universidade Estadual do Rio de Janeiro and the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, in Brasil. In 2025, she received the prémio Vergílio Ferreira, awarded by the Universidade de Évora, for her contribution to Portuguese-language narrative. She was a human rights adviser to the Casa Civil do Presidente da República (21-26). She taught at New York University and is currently a researcher at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Folha de S.Paulo, Serrote, ZUM, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Common Knowledge, Colóquio-Letras, la Repubblica, Quatro Cinco Um, among many other publications. She is a columnist for Quatro Cinco Um, Observador and ZUM.