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Nonfiction Piece Published in Literary Magazine Revera: Escritos de Criação Literária
I wrote “O Buraco” (The Hole) in 2019, almost by accident — or perhaps out of a small moment of creative desperation. An assignment for the module Writing Humour Seriously, part of the Creative Writing programme at Instituto Vera Cruz, was due the next day, and I still had absolutely no idea what to write. I sat at my desk and vowed I would only stand up when the bloody thing was ready. I finished at about 4 AM and went to sleep the slleep of the just.
Advice I heard from a friend in marketing: presure can be the best catalyst to brilliant ideas. May not work for any scenario, but proved very true in this case.
The postgraduate module was taught by the poet and chronicler Fabrício Corsaletti, whose work I have long admired for a rare quality: the ability to produce lightness without superficiality. Perhaps that is why Imagine my surprise when I received an email from the magazine’s editor talking about proofing and layout. Only then I learned that Corsaletti himself had suggested my piece for publication in Revera literary magazine. Revera is run by the Instituto Vera Cruz itself and is dedicated to reflection on writing, creative process, and the training of writers, with a section dedicated to literary pieces themselves – where my little text was placed.
‘O Buraco’ grew out of something very simple: the everyday experience of being friends with my best friend, plus the time I fell in a whole on campus while late for Linguistics test during my undergrad – tragically hilarious. Our friendship, built over many years, began in a place we shared — that of feeling, each in our own way, slightly out of place. It was through that friendship that I learned something that was not at all obvious to me at the time: that disability, too, can be approached through humour. Not a humour that diminishes the experience, but the kind that creates some kind of lightness and builds up space to breathe within it.This kind of attention to everyday life is precisely the territory of the Brazilian ‘crônica’. Unlike what in English or in other Western traditions is usually called a chronicle — a historical account organised chronologically — the Brazilian crônica is a brief, hybrid literary form closely tied to everyday life. It begins with an apparently minor episode and opens it into a broader reflection on human experience, often marked by humour, irony, or melancholy. ‘O Buraco’ emerged in just this way: from a small situation that unexpectedly revealed something larger about friendship, disability, and the ability to laugh at yourself and at uncomfortable situations.
You can read the full chronicle (in Portuguese) in the issue of Revera available at the link below.https://site.veracruz.edu.br/instituto/revistarevera/index.php/revera/issue/download/5/7
