Maria Rosa Colaço (19352004) was a Portuguese teacher, writer and journalist.

Biography

Maria Rosa Parreiro Colaço was born in

Torrão Torrão () is a Freguesia (Portugal), civil parish and Town#Portugal, town, in the concelho, municipality of Alcácer do Sal Municipality, Alcácer do Sal, in the Portugal, Portuguese district of Setúbal District, Setúbal, bordering on the distr ...

in the municipality of

Alcácer do Sal Alcácer do Sal () is a municipality in Portugal, located in Setúbal District. The population in 2011 was 13,046, in an area of 1,499.87 km2. History Earliest settlement There has been human settlement in the area for more than 40,000 y ...

in the

Setúbal District The District of Setúbal ( ) is a district located in the south-west of Portugal. It is named for its capital, the city of Setúbal. Geography It is delimited by Lisbon District and Santarém District on the north, Évora District on the eas ...

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. Featuring Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point in continental Europe, Portugal borders Spain to its north and east, with which it share ...

on 19 September 1935. She trained to be a nurse at the Portuguese Institute of Oncology but then changed to training to be a primary school teacher in

Évora Évora ( , ), officially the Very Noble and Ever Loyal City of Évora (), is a city and a municipalities of Portugal, municipality in Portugal. It has 53,591 inhabitants (2021), in an area of . It is the historic capital of the Alentejo reg ...

. After training she moved to the Portuguese colony of Mozambique, where she taught in

Nampula Nampula is the capital city of Nampula Province in Northern Mozambique. With a population of 743,125 (2017 census), it is the third-largest city in Mozambique after Maputo and Matola. The city is located in the interior of Nampula Province, appro ...

, Beira and Lourenço Marques (now

Maputo Maputo () is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Mozambique. Located near the southern end of the country, it is within of the borders with Eswatini and South Africa. The city has a population of 1,088,449 (as of 2017) distributed ov ...

) and also wrote for the local newspapers ''Notícias da Beira'' and ''Notícias de Lourenço Marques''. Four years after

Mozambique Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique, is a country located in Southeast Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west, and Eswatini and South Afr ...

's independence she returned to Portugal to teach and lived in

Almada Almada () is a city and a municipality in Portugal, located on the southern margin of the Tagus River, on the opposite side of the river from Lisbon. The two cities are connected by the 25 de Abril Bridge. The population of the municipality in 20 ...

, on the left bank of the River

Tagus The Tagus ( ; ; ) is the longest river in the Iberian Peninsula. The river rises in the Montes Universales between Cuenca and Teruel, in mid-eastern Spain, flows , generally westward, and empties into the Atlantic Ocean in Lisbon. Name T ...

, to the south of the Portuguese capital of

Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...

. With her husband, António Lille Delgado Malaquias de Lemos, she had three children. Promoting the importance of reading in the development and education of children, Colaço was particularly identified with her book ''A Criança e a Vida'' (Child and Life), a collection of stories written by her primary school students in Mozambique, which was published in 1960 and has been translated into several other languages, and as a journalist, having a weekly column of chronicles about everyday life in the Lisbon-based newspaper, ''

A Capital ''A Capital'' (meaning ''The Capital ity' in English) was a Portuguese afternoon newspaper published in Lisbon, Portugal, between 1968 and 2005. History and profile ''A Capital'' was first published on 21 February 1968. The paper was establ ...

'', as well as writing for several other newspapers including ''

Diário de Notícias () is a Portuguese weekly newspaper published in Lisbon, Portugal. Established since 1864, the paper is considered a newspaper of record for Portugal. History and profile ''Diário de Notícias'' was first published in Lisbon on 29 December 1 ...

''. She was an advisor to RTP ('' Rádio e Televisão de Portugal'') on children´s television programmes, taking a course in

screenplay A screenplay, or script, is a written work produced for a film, television show (also known as a '' teleplay''), or video game by screenwriters (cf. ''stage play''). Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of w ...

writing. She was also associated with children’s theatre, her first play being written in 1958. Colaço became known as a writer of children's books although she was never happy being called a writer of children's literature, saying that she was writing for all readers. In 1982 she won the Soeiro Pereira Gomes Prize for her book ''Gaivota''. In 1989, she won the Alice Gomes Award from the Portuguese Association for Education through Art for the work ''Anjo Branco''. She also prepared several texts for exhibition catalogues by artists and by the photographer Eduardo Gageiro, with whom she collaborated on ''Estas Crianças Aqui'' (These children here) in 1988. Maria Rosa Colaço died on October 13, 2004. The annual Maria Rosa Colaço Literary Prize celebrates her work and she has also given her name to several roads in Portugal and to the public library in Torrão.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Colaco, Maria Rosa Portuguese children's writers 1935 births 2004 deaths 20th-century Portuguese journalists Portuguese women children's writers People from Setúbal District 20th-century Portuguese educators Portuguese women educators Portuguese schoolteachers 20th-century Portuguese women journalists 21st-century Portuguese journalists 21st-century Portuguese women journalists