The Valencian Language Academy (AVL) has announced that its 2027 'Writer of the Year' program will be dedicated to female authorship during the Modern Age. This initiative aims to focus attention on writings produced by women in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, continuing the AVL's first 'Writer of the Year' celebration in 2004, which focused on Valencian writers of the same era.
The institution intends to value and publicize recent research by specialists such as M. Ángeles Herrero Herrero and Verònica Zaragoza Gómez. These experts have reviewed the role of women in culture and literary creation, studying religious, spiritual, lyrical, and autobiographical texts that offer a worldview alternative to the official historical discourse. The 2027 'Writer of the Year' Commission, composed of M. Àngels Francés, Àngels Gregori, Susanna Lliberós, and Carme Manuel, with Herrero and Zaragoza serving as external commissioners and advisors, is driving this project.
As a starting point, the AVL proposes the study of the correspondence between Hipòlita Roís de Liori (1479-1546) and her daughter, Estefania de Requesens i Roís de Liori (c. 1504-1549). Hipòlita Roís de Liori, Baroness of Riba-roja, was born in Valencia and moved to the Principality upon her marriage. From 1517 onwards, she initiated a correspondence that intensified when she began managing the family's assets. The letters written in Valencian between 1533 and 1538, addressed to her daughter and other personalities such as the theologian Pere Antoni Beuter or Benet Honorat Joan, form the bulk of this correspondence.
From the 2027 'Writer of the Year' Commission, they highlight that this private and familial epistolary is a valuable sample for understanding the lives and worldviews of women of the era, especially considering that many female epistolaries have been lost or are not located.
Additionally, other testimonies of female authorship in Valencian from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries will be investigated. These cases include those of Àngela Almenar i Monfort, founder of the College of the Assumption of the Virgin (Na Monforta), who wrote the 'Constitutions' printed by printer Jerònima Galés. Works by nuns such as Laura Barberà i Rosas, author of religious verses, and Narcisa Torres (Rosa Trincares), who wrote poems in defense of Valencian during the Enlightenment, will also be considered. The role of the women of the Borja family in the ecclesiastical and political power of the era will also be studied.
The ultimate goal is to bring to light the cases of other women who, from private or confessional roles, left their mark in Valencian, documenting their passage through a world that often denied them access to public discourse.
