Conceição Lima Named Cultural Ambassador of São Tomé & Principé
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE— We are honored to share that Conceição Lima, author of Deep Vellum’s poetry collection No Gods Live Here, translated by Shook, has been named the Cultural Ambassador of São Tomé and Principé. This announcement was made by Carlos Vila Nova, the President of the Republic, in September of this year, honoring Conceição Lima’s efforts in promoting São Tomé and Principé’s cultural identity around the world through her poetry.
Conceição Lima “...currently stands as the greatest São Tomé writer and poet, whose poetic work is internationally recognized and translated into more than a dozen languages,” stated Ilza Amado Vaz, São Tomé and Principé’s Foreign Minister.
The poet accepted the distinction while emphasizing the importance of preserving São Tomé and Principé’s cultural identity through the preservation of all art forms and of the Portuguese language, the nation’s official language, in which she writes her poems.
Conceição Lima ended her acceptance speech by speaking of belonging and identity, noting her commitment to representing the São Toméan people with these experiences in mind: “The sense of belonging is fundamental, intrinsic, and inalienable, and cannot be borrowed or transacted. We are because we are, we are because we want to be, and who we cannot help but be. This has always been, and will continue to be, my understanding, my feeling, and the conviction that will guide me as a representative and cultural ambassador of São Tomé and Principé. My spirit and my commitment is to serve São Tomé and Principé, the people, and the nation.”
No Gods Live Here, released by Deep Vellum’s imprint Phoneme Media in 2024, was the first full length poetry collection to be translated into English by a São Toméan woman. Conceição Lima was awarded the Northern California Book Award for this collection in September of this year. The judges of the award unanimously voted for No Gods Live Here, which is the first time in the award’s history that a title received unanimous support. In World Literature today’s review of the collection, they wrote that No Gods Live Here is "Carefully curated, beautifully translated… The poems in this volume brim with intensity and poignancy."
WINNER OF THE 2021 WORDS WITHOUT BORDERS—ACADEMY OF AMERICAN POETS POEMS IN TRANSLATION CONTEST
WINNER OF THE 2025 NORTHERN CALIFORNIA BOOK AWARD
No Gods Live Here, the first book-length collection by a woman from São Tomé to appear in English, is grounded in the lush islands' history of slavery, colonialism, and independence.
A career-spanning collection from giant of Santomean poetry Conceição Lima, No Gods Live Here catalogues and memorializes the cruelties and triumphs of the country's past alongside the poet's own childhood poems set against the tiny island nation's distinctive flora and geography. Through vivid imagery, Lima evokes São Tomé and Príncipe, from popular Santomean music to imagery of fishermen on the beach, while remaining ever aware of the subjective meeting of memory, time, and place.
Through poetry, Lima unites past and present to resurrect hope in human creation and the possibility of metamorphosis.
Conceição Lima was born in 1961 in the island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe, where she resides today. She studied journalism in Portugal and attended graduate school in London, where she later worked as a producer at the BBC’s Portuguese Language Service. She has published four books of poetry: O Útero da Casa (The Womb of the House) in 2004, A Dolorosa Raiz do Micondó (The Painful Root of the Micondó) in 2006, O País de Akendenguê (The Country of Akendenguê) in 2011, and Quando Florirem Salambás no Tecto do Pico (When Velvet Tamarinds Flower on Pico de São Tomé) in 2015. Her work in Shook’s translation has appeared in the Literary Review, Jai-Alai, and World Literature Today.
Shook is a poet and translator whose work with Conceição Lima has been recognized with a 2017 Translation Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and as a winner of the 2021 Words Without Borders—Academy of American Poets Poems in Translation Contest.
Deep Vellum is a nonprofit publishing house and literary arts organization with the mission to bring the world into conversation through literature. Founded in 2013 in Dallas, TX, Deep Vellum has expanded to encompass six distinct publishing imprints and is now the largest publisher of translated literature in the United States.