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

Written By Jessica Gabrielzyk

“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

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

Jessica Gabrielzyk

Jessica Gabrielzyk is a Brazilian writer living in Switzerland. She moved there with her husband and daughter, who was three months old at the time and had strong opinions about the whole thing even then.

She writes about change.

The visible kind and the kind that happens inside a person, while everything on the outside looks fine.

Her first book, Maternity Abroad, explored what it means to become a mother far from the system you trusted. It has reached readers in more than fifteen countries across five continents. Parenting Unpacked, her second book, follows the experience of parenting through major life disruption, whether that's an international move, a career loss, a new baby, or a life that simply stops responding the way it used to. My First American Coloring Book was created to help toddlers engage with daily life in the United States through play and familiar imagery.

She is a member of SIETAR, the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research, and the International Academy of Brazilian Literature.

She writes for the parent who is still inside it, getting through the day, and wondering somewhere underneath all of it who they are becoming.

When she is not writing, she is walking forty minutes uphill with a stroller, telling herself the exercise is the point.

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My Book Designer Came Up With an Idea So Good I Thought She Was Flirting With Me.