Hélia Correia and the Grupo Coral Guadiana de Mértola

Hélia Correia was born in Lisbon in 1949 and spent her childhood and youth in Mafra. She finished her secondary education in Lisbon, where she attended the Faculty of Arts and graduated in Romance Philology, and was a secondary school teacher. In 2002, she took her master's degree in Theater of Classical Antiquity.

As a novelist, Hélia Correia revealed herself as one of the most important and original names to emerge during the 1980s, when she published, in 1981, O Separar das Águas. This was followed by novels and telenovelas such as Montedemo, Insânia, A Casa Eterna (Maximum Literature Prize, 2000), Lillias Fraser (PEN Club Fiction Prize, 2001, and D. Dinis Prize, 2002), Bastardia (Maxima Literature Prize, , 2006), Adoecer (Inês de Castro Foundation Prize, 2010) and A Dancer in Batalha (Grand Prize for Romance and Novel APE/DGLAB, 2018). Her work has diversified into poetry and drama. In poetry, she has a vast collaboration in anthologies and newspapers started at age 18 in the Juvenil do Diário de Lisboa and published works such as A Pequena Morte / Esse Eterno Canto (in diptych with Jaime Rocha) and Apodera-Te de Mim. A Terceira Miséria (2012) received the Poetry Prize from the PEN Club and the Correntes d’Escritas Literary Prize. In 2020, she published Accidents. Her writing for theater integrates the influence of the Greek classics, in works such as Perdition ─ Exercise on Antigone, O Rancor ─ Exercise on Helena, and Desmesura ─ Exercise with Medea.

He published an anthology of short stories in November 2008, Contos de Hélia Correia, and, in 2014, Vinte Degraus e Outros Contos, which received the Camilo Castelo Branco Short Story Grand Prize, awarded by the Portuguese Association of Writers and the Vila Nova City Council. from Famalicão. For children, the books from the Mopsos collection, The Little Greek: The Gold of Delphi and The Crown of Olympia and their versions of Shakespeare's works, A Midsummer Night's Dream ─ Children's Version and The Enchanted Island ─ for Youth from The Tempest. In 2011, he published Twainy's Arrival and, ten years later, Inventor of Gales. In 2015, he was awarded the Camões Prize, which is considered the most important literary award to be awarded to a Portuguese-speaking author for the entirety of his work.