In a 1972 chronicle, in the context of the survey "Literature in Portugal. What is it? What is it for?", Maria Velho da Costa wrote that "good writing is never a matter of one's navel", showing right from the start a keenness for dialogue and for the creation of textual communication corridors among all those who prefer the act of writing, on the assumption that, as she affirms in the same step, "to prefer the act of writing is to discover it tasty and effective". In fact, her literary work shows that dialogue happens not only at the level of literature, but calls for various arts and languages.
The pleasure, but also the challenge in reading Maria Velho da Costa, comes precisely from the tenacity and boldness with which the author integrates and crosses in her text different ways of making it readable, as well as a multiplicity of intra, inter and trans-textual references that nourish the text and turn it into a "glossy mystery", playful and performative, that opens to new and often unusual semantic territories.
The partnerships established with professionals from the cinema, theatre, plastic arts and photography confirm this appetite for inter-artistic dialogue, verbal juggling and performance, tracing the profile of an avid writer who is attentive to the movement of the world and to the sensibility of those who keep saying it, by the use of their creativity.