Domingas Samy

Domingas Barbosa Mendes Samy (born January 2, 1955) is a Bissau-Guinean poet and short story writer. She has published in four languages, Guinean Creole, Portuguese, Russian, and French. Her short story collection A Escola: Contos ("The School: Stories," 1993) was the first work of prose fiction published by an author from Guinea-Bissau.

Domingas Samy was born on January 2, 1955 in Bula in the Cacheu Region of the colony of Portuguese Guinea. She attended the Honório Barreto National High School in Bissau, renamed the Kwame Nkrumah National High School in her final year when Guinea-Bissau gained independence. She attended Voronezh State University in the Soviet Union, earning a degree in Germanic philology in 1981.

Samy returned to Guniea-Bissau to teach French at her alma mater. Her poems appeared in the Antologia Poética da Guiné-Bissau (1990), considered a groundbreaking work.

Samy became a leading member of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde and served as director of the National Library of Guinea-Bissau and the secretary of the National Union of Artists and Writers of Guinea-Bissau.