Portuguese poet, intellectual, and social activist. Born on the island of São Miguel, Azores, her father emigrated to Brazil when she was eleven, and she settled with her mother and sister in Lisbon, where she studied at the Filipa de Lencastre Lyceum. She began writing and published her first work, aimed for children, in 1945, but quickly established herself as a poet for more mature audiences. During the 1950s and 1960s, one of the most vibrant intellectual get-togethers in Lisbon was held in her house, attended by the most prominent figures in the arts, humanities and oppositionist politics, both Portuguese and international. In addition to being friends with national figures such as Amália Rodrigues, David Mourão-Ferreira, António Sérgio, Francisco Sá Carneiro, Almada Negreiros, Ary dos Santos or Mário Cesariny, she was also host to international figures such as Henry Miller, Graham Greene or Eugène Ionesco. These reunions were so famous that some were recorded and later published. From 1971 onwards, these meetings took place at the "Botequim" bar, a space she founded the same year. It became the nerve center of the Lisbon social gathering and political conspiracy. She became known for her energetic and controversial personality free from social conventions, which is reflected in her writing. Recognized through several aspects of authorship, as she was a poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, anthologist, translator, journalist, screenwriter and editor, she became known in the written press and, later, in the 1980s, on television, with the "Mátria" program, where she advocated a different form of feminism, identifying women as the archetype of erotic and passionate freedom and the matrix source of humanity. She was also coordinator of the "Arcádia", one of the main Portuguese book publishing companies of her time. Endowed with an unusual oratorical talent and great combative courage, she took an active part in the opposition movements to the Estado Novo dictatorial regime, having participated in the MUD (Movement of Democratic Unity, 1945), in supporting the candidacies for the Presidency of the Republic of General Norton de Matos (1949) and Humberto Delgado (1958) and CEUD (Electoral Commission for Democratic Unity, 1969), led by future President Mário Soares. A fervent social activist, she was sentenced to three years in prison with a suspended sentence in 1966, for publishing "Antologia da Poesia Portuguesa Erótica e Satírica" ("Anthology of Portuguese Erotic and Satirical Poetry"), considered offensive to customs and was prosecuted for having had editorial responsibility for "Novas Cartas Portuguesas" ("New Portuguese Letters"), a controversial literary work for the time by Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Velho da Costa and Maria Teresa Horta (who became known as the "Three Marias"). The book revealed the existence of acute discriminatory situations in Portugal, related to dictatorial repression, the power of the Catholic patriarchy and the condition of women (marriage, motherhood, female sexuality), also denouncing the injustices of the colonial war and the realities of the Portuguese as colonialists in Africa, emigrants, refugees or exiles in the world, and "returnees" in Portugal. Her public political intervention took her to Parliament, in the period following the April 25, 1974 Revolution, being elected as a deputy in 1980, in the PSD lists. She would, however, become an independent deputy when she clashed with the PSD's conservative positions on matters of customs, claiming to have believed in their reformist project but having come across conservatism. She was the author of controversial parliamentary interventions and became famous, during a debate on abortion, on November 11, 1982, for the satirical poem she wrote against João Morgado, deputy of the CDS, who stated that "the sexual act is for having children". The poem was published days later by the newspaper "Diário de Lisboa". In 1976, she received the La Fleur de Laure literary award from the Centre International de Poésie Néo-Latine and the Comité des Prix Petrarque de Poésie Néo-Latine. In 1979 she was commissioned to write the lyrics of the new official hymn of the Autonomous Region of Azores, which was adopted on October 21, 1980 as "Hino dos Açores". On July 13, 1981, she was awarded the rank of Grand Officer of the Military Order of Saint James of the Sword. In 1985, she supported the Democratic Renewal Party of António Ramalho Eanes, where she believed she saw an alternative of progressive reformism for the country. She then returned to be a deputy, for this party's lists, between 1987 and 1991. She received, in 1991, the Great Prize for Poetry from the Portuguese Association of Writers for her book "Sonetos Românticos". In the same year, on November 26, she was awarded the rank of Grand Officer of the Order of Liberty. Together with José Saramago (Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998), Armindo Magalhães, Manuel da Fonseca and Urbano Tavares Rodrigues, she was, in 1992, one of the founders of the National Front for the Defense of Culture (FNDC). She married four times, divorced twice and had no children. A heavy smoker, she died suddenly on March 16, 1993, at the age of 69. She was cremated and her ashes were interred in the Writers Mausoleum, in Prazeres Cemetery, Lisbon. Her ashes and those of her last husband were later moved to the indoor garden of the Public Library and Regional Archive of Ponta Delgada, in the Autonomous Region of Azores, in 2015. She had bequeathed most of her assets to that institution, which has in its custody part of her literary estate (shared with the National Library of Lisbon): many published and unpublished volumes, biographical documents, iconography and correspondence, including multiple works of art and her private library.