We’re thrilled to reveal the cover for A Thousand Thoughts in Flight, a collection of diary entries by the late Portuguese writer Maria Gabriela Llansol, translated by Audrey Young.
Here’s a bit about the book from its publisher, Deep Vellum:
Over the course of her life, Maria Gabriela Llansol wrote many thousands of pages. She left behind 70 diaries in all, which began in November 1974 and continued until 2007. Three of them were published during her lifetime. Diary I begins the day she finishes The Book of Communities and ends the day she finishes The Remaining Life, in 1977. Diary II picks up two years later, when she is finishing In the House of July and August and beginning the second trilogy. It follows her through the second trilogy and captures her first ideas for the Lisbonleipzig duology; it is here where Bach and Pessoa begin their encounter, in 1982. Diary III is less a diary than a mourning of the death of her friend, the Portuguese writer Virgílio Ferreira, one of the only contemporary writers with whom she felt any affinity. It is a mapping of their relationship and a conversation between them.
A note from translator Audrey Young…
Llansol had a deep affinity with what she has called the “vegetal world.” Her garden and its plants, both named and unnamed, are a constant presence in her diaries. She would tend her garden and then would write, still feeling as though she were in her garden. She would gather nettles from her garden to make soup, “with the sensation that my garden was spontaneously tending me.” Her fragments migrated across forms, from dream to diary, from diary to book, from book back to diary, and her garden pervades all of those forms. “I am not writing these notes for anyone, I am writing them for the plants themselves…
…and from cover designer Emily Mahon
The translator had expressed a desire to explore the idea of the natural world on the cover. I started looking at pieces by Japanese designer Hisui Sigiura, and while I loved his style for this book, I couldn’t find many pieces available for reuse. I ended up looking for similar graphic floral elements from stock sources, and found a few that had the abstract feel I was after. I focused on a few layouts, and added texture to give the composition more depth. Some of the typographic elements were painted to add a personal touch, as this is a collection of diary entries that spans three decades.
A Thousand Thoughts in Flight will be published by Deep Vellum on July 5.
