Maria Fátima Velho Da CostaThe 3 Marias, all feminists, all named Maria, all mothers, all educated by nuns, wrote this book together about the lives of women in Portugal. When they submitted the text to the national censors as required by law in the closing days of the Portuguse dictatorship, they were arrested for "abusing the freedom of the press" and for pornography. Their book and their treatment became the first international protest issue of the feminist movement. With the fall of the dictatorship in 1974, their trial was ended and the charges dropped. MARIA FÁTIMA VELHO DA COSTA (1938-2020) was another important Portuguese feminist writer. Ironically for one of "The Three Marias", her father, an army colonel, served on the Portuguese national censorship commission to which all manuscripts had to be submitted.Already an established writer by 1969 with the publication of her novel Maina Mendes, she of course became even better known with New Portuguese Letters, and she served as president of the Associação Portuguesa de Escritores (Portuguese Association of Writers). She was a Reader in the Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at King's College London from 1980 to 1987. After her death in 2020 a new prize was instituted in her honor by the Sociedade Portuguesa de Autores (Portuguese Society of Authors), the Prémio de Literatura Maria Velho Costa. Read More Read Less