Hi, I’m gabriela de mendonça gomes.
Why A Life of Reading
I created A Life of Reading from the conviction that serious engagement with literature should not be confined to the university. Through long-form video essays and companion writing, I explore books as works of art, historical objects, philosophical arguments, and encounters capable of changing how we understand ourselves and the world.
My work moves across literary traditions, periods, and languages, with particular attention to translation, mythology, modernism, Brazilian literature, the canon, and the relationship between literature and philosophy.
My background
In 2024, I graduated college with degrees in Literature and Philosophy. I spent my time as an undergraduate relishing the fact that my main cargos in life were teaching through TAing and tutoring and study––that is, reading, writing, writing about reading and reading about writing.
I spent 2025 in Peru on a Fulbright grant, where I taught English in a large city in the south of the country for the first half of the year and small village in the north for the other.
In 2026, I was accepted into a Comparative Literature Ph.D. program, only to have the funding pulled without warning. But then, I realized that what I wanted to do in that program––dedicate my time to reading widely and deeply, researching topics I love, writing about them, and sharing those passions and learnings with others––didn’t have to, and in fact ought not to be confined to formalized, institutionalized classrooms.
Thus, a Life of Reading.