The Brazilian Ambassador in Vancouver Received Our Book. Luciana Sent Me the Photo at 11:28pm.

“Hoje o embaixador brasileiro em Vancouver ganhou o livro de vcs de presente” - Luciana Gomide wrote.

Today the Brazilian ambassador in Vancouver received your book as a gift.

Mulheres em Travessia is an anthology. 34 authors. 8 countries. A collection of texts about women in transit — emotionally, geographically, personally. Luciana curated it. She selected every text through a blind process. She did not know whose writing she was choosing when she chose it. She just chose the ones that were good enough.

Mine was one of them.

I have written about that before — the specific weight of being selected for something anonymously. Of knowing that the text stood on its own without my name attached to it. That somebody read it and thought yes, this one, without knowing it was mine. You can read that post here.

Author Luciana Gomide & Sr Nestor Forster

And now that text, in that anthology, was in the hands of the Brazilian ambassador in Vancouver on Dia da Língua Portuguesa 2026.

She was at an event at the Consulate General, thought of the 34 of us, and sent the photo while I was already in bed. That is the kind of person she is.

I started this journey writing because I needed to. Because the information I needed did not exist and the experience I was living did not have language yet and I thought: someone should write this down. I did not imagine that the writing would end up in a consulate in Vancouver on a night celebrating the Portuguese language. I did not plan for that. I just kept writing.

Apparently that was enough.

Luciana Gomide — thank you for curating something worth curating. Thank you for sending the photo. And thank you for standing in that room with our book and thinking of all of us.

Jessica Gabrielzyk