Caio Fernando Abreu (1948–1996), known as Caio F. (his signature), was an award-winning journalist, writer, and cultural agitator who portrayed the myriad contradictions of urban Brazil in the 1970s and ’80s like no other. The author of 20 books, including 12 story collections and two novels, he has been awarded major literary prizes, including the prestigious Jabuti Award for Fiction a total of three times. During the military dictatorship in Brazil (1964–1985), his homoerotic writing was heavily censored, and he found refuge in the literary counterculture and like-minded writers such as Hilda Hilst and Dalton Trevisan. In 1994, while living in exile in France, he tested HIV positive. He passed away two years later in Porto Alegre, his hometown, at the age of 47. His books, written in a personal and economic style, speak of love, fear, death, and, above all, the anguish of human loneliness. Abreu’s magnum opus, Morangos mofados (1982), was recently translated into English as Moldy Strawberries (2022) by Bruna Dantas Lobato.
Miriam Adelman (b. Milwaukee, 1955) has an academic background in the social sciences, with degrees from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), New York University (NYU), and the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC). She taught sociology at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR) for 27 years. She is also a poet and translator and has published widely both in and between the disciplines, from sociology to cultural and literary studies. In 2020, she published her first collection of poetry, the bilingual volume Found in Translation (Nosotros Editorial) and, in 2021, Mundo Barbie (Edições Jabuticaba), a translation of US poet Denise Duhamel’s Kinky (co-translated with Julia Raiz and Emanuela Siqueira). At present, she is affiliated with the Graduate Program in Literary Studies at the UFPR and continues her socio-anthropological work as a CNPq grant recipient.
Cristhiano Aguiar is a Brazilian writer, literary critic, and professor of literature. He holds a master’s degree in Literature from the Federal University of Pernambuco and a PhD from Mackenzie Presbyterian University in São Paulo. Currently, he is a professor at Mackenzie Presbyterian University, where he specializes in horror, science fiction, and religion within the Latin American context. In 2023, Aguiar was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University. As a writer, Aguiar was named one of the best young Brazilian writers by Granta magazine in 2012. He has published two noteworthy collections of short stories: Na outra margem, o Leviatã (Lote 42, 2018) and Gótico nordestino (Companhia das Letras, 2022). The latter solidified his literary presence, and, in 2022, Aguiar received the Clarice Lispector Award for Best Short Story Collection.
Edimilson de Almeida Pereira is an acclaimed poet, novelist, anthropologist, literary critic, and professor of Portuguese and African Literatures at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais. As a researcher of Afro-Brazilian performances, cosmologies, and oral literatures, Pereira has published extensively. Some of his most recent literary publications include Poesia+: (antologia 1985–2019) (Editora 34, 2019), Um corpo à deriva (Macondo, 2020), O ausente (Relicário, 2020), and Front (Nós, 2020), which won the São Paulo Prize for Literature.
Joaquim Pedro de Andrade (1932–1988) was a Brazilian filmmaker and writer. Though best known for directing the 1969 adaptation of the modernist epic Macunaíma, he directed several other films, such as Garrincha, alegria do povo (1962) and O padre e a moça (1966), which garnered critical acclaim from national and international audiences. Andrade is recognized as a leading figure of Cinema Novo, a movement which sought to appropriate and reconfigure Italian neorealist and French New Wave aesthetics within a heterogeneous, Latin American context. His never-realized screenplay, O imponderável Bento contra o crioulo voador, was written between 1986 and 1988 and published posthumously in 2018 by Todavia.
Jason Araújo is a PhD candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. He holds an MA in French and Francophone Studies from San Diego State University and a BA in History from the University of San Diego. His research area focuses on the dynamic relationship between the Mediterranean and the River Plate during the 19th and 20th centuries. He is also passionate about translation, having served as translator for Southern California–based Taller California’s Rio de Agua Vive (2024).
Clarah Averbuck is a writer and one of the pioneers of the Brazilian blogosphere. She began her writing career online, writing for the e-zine CardosOnline (1998) and her own blog, brazileira!preta (2001). She has published seven novels: Máquina de pinball (Editora Conrad, 2002), Das coisas esquecidas atrás da estante (Editora 7Letras, 2003), Vida de gato (Editora Planeta, 2004), Nossa Senhora da Pequena Morte (Editora do Bispo, 2009), Cidade Grande no Escuro (Editora 7Letras, 2012), Eu quero ser eu (Editora Planeta, Editora 7Letras, 2014), and Toureando o Diabo (Editora Averbooks, 2016). In 2008, her novel Vida de gato was translated into English by Francisco Araujo da Costa (Cat Life, Future Fiction London). In the same year, her novel Máquina de pinball was adapted into the film Nome próprio (dir. Murilo Salles).
Xavier Blackwell-Lipkind, a 2024 Marshall Scholar, has published stories and essays in The Threepenny Review, The Drift, Gulf Coast, West Branch, and Copper Nickel. He studied Comparative Literature at Yale University, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Yale Literary Magazine, wrote a thesis on Proust and music, and received a Critical Language Scholarship for immersive coursework in Brazil.
Paulo Candido is a Brazilian author, poet, and translator. He has translated many American and English novels into Portuguese over the last 10 years. He has also translated fiction and non-fiction Brazilian works into English and Spanish. Paulo holds a PhD in Developmental Psychology.
Tobias Carvalho (b. Porto Alegre, 1995) is the author of two acclaimed short story collections and the novel Quarto aberto (2023). He wrote his debut collection, As coisas (2018), while still a student in International Relations at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, and it won the Prêmio Sesc de Literatura in 2018. His second work, Visão noturna (2021), won the short story category of the Prêmio Açorianos de Literatura, 2022. Carvalho’s fiction deals with the day-to-day lives of young LGBTQ people in contemporary Brazil, which has inevitably led to comparisons with Caio Fernando Abreu. His prose style has been praised as clean, organic, and subtly sentimental. Daniel Galera calls him “an author who manages to be sensitive and relentless in every line, sharp in his treatment of action and emotion, etching that rare feeling of truth—which we look for in the best literature—into his stories.”
Maria Clara Escobar is a film director, script writer, and poet. She wrote and directed the films Desterro (2019), which debuted at the Rotterdam International Festival Tiger Competition, and the documentary Os dias com ele (2013), in which she researches the life of her father, who was tortured by agents of the Brazilian military dictatorship. She has written and directed several short films, including Onde habito, passeio de família, and Domingo, and co-authored the scripts for the films Ontem havia coisas estranhas no céu (dir. Bruno Risas, 2020) and Histórias que só existem quando lembradas (dir. Julia Murat, 2011). Escobar also works as a consultant in script writing and montage and as a jury member for public calls and film festivals. She has published three volumes of poetry: Medo, medo, medo (Nosotros Editorial, 2019), Um novo mar dentro de mim (Ed. Quelônio, 2021), and Zonas de guerra (Nosotros Editorial, 2022).
Julia Garcia is a Brazilian teacher and scholar. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Comparative Literature at Western University in London, Ontario. She holds an MA in English from Brock University (Canada) and a teaching specialization in Language and Literature from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. Her research interests are narratology, science fiction, and adaptation. She teaches English as an additional language to refugees and newcomers to Canada in London, Ontario.
Luisa Geisler is a Brazilian writer and literary translator. She holds an MA in Creative Process from the National University of Ireland. She is the author of Luzes de emergência se acenderão automaticamente (Alfaguara, 2014) and De espaços abandonados (Alfaguara, 2018), among others. She is a two-time winner of the Prêmio Sesc de Literatura, in addition to the APCA, Minuano, and Açorianos prizes. She has taken part in artistic-literary actions with the MALBA in Buenos Aires, the Serpentine Gallery in London, and the OMI Ledig House in New York. She has texts and books published in over 15 countries. Born in Canoas, Rio Grande do Sul, in 1991, she completed an MA in Brazilian Literature and Culture at the University of New Mexico. She is currently a PhD candidate in Spanish and Portuguese Literature at Princeton University.
Isaac Giménez is an Assistant Adjunct Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Los Angeles. He holds a PhD in Hispanic Language and Literature and an MA in Afro-Luso-Brazilian Literature and Film Studies from the same institution. His research interests, both academic and artistic, include performance poetry, recycling poetics, visual studies, authorship studies, and gender and sexuality. With a background in translation and interpreting, he is a current member of the UCLA Working Group on the Comedia in Translation as well as a collaborator of Al Otro Lado, a non-profit that provides legal, linguistic, and humanitarian support to migrants at the US border.
Ana Guimarães is a PhD candidate in Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. Before her doctoral studies, she earned her master’s degree in Latin American Literature from the University of Arizona. Guimarães has secured research grants that have allowed her to conduct extensive fieldwork in Brazil and Argentina, deepening her engagement with the culture and literature of the region. Her dissertation research engages with the concept of dwelling within the contexts of everyday life as depicted in Latin American fiction, scrutinizing how literature represents, challenges, and theorizes this notion of dwelling. In addition to her research, Guimarães contributes to the academic community as a Graduate Student Instructor of Spanish and Portuguese, sharing her passion for language and Latin American culture with students.
Jon Russell Herring (b. Manchester, 1970) is a writer and early career translator working from Portuguese and Spanish. He was one of the inaugural Queer Digital Residents at the Poetry Translation Centre, South London, in 2022. For his nine-month residency, Herring collaborated with Argentinian poet Osvaldo Bossi, producing the first English versions of around 20 of Bossi’s pieces from across his career. He also scripted, shot, and subtitled an experimental autofictional film Afinidad inacabada (2023), about his experience translating one of Bossi’s poems. In 2023, Herring jointly won the Stephen Spender Prize for a co-translation of an untitled poem by Brazilian writer Ana Martins Marques. His short story “Quartet” was published in May 2024, and he completed an MA in Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia, Norwich this fall. He now lives in Navarra in northern Spain, where he teaches English and continues to work as a freelance translator.
Emyr Wallace Humphreys translates from Welsh and Portuguese to English and from English to Welsh. A graduate of the MA program in Translation Studies at University College London, he has had literary translations published in journals such as The White Review, New Welsh Review, and Joyland magazine and has collaborated with Parthian Books, HarperCollins, and UCL Press as a literary translator. He won a bursary for the 2022 Bristol Translates Literary Translation Summer School and was the first Celtic-language translator to be awarded the 2022–2023 Visible Communities Mentorship, part of the National Centre for Writing’s Emerging Translator Mentorship program. He is a two-time nominee for Deep Vellum’s Best Literary Translations anthology. He lives in Wales, dividing his time between rural Powys and Aberystwyth.
Jane Kassavin is a Dornsife Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Southern California. She holds a PhD in Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture and a Graduate Certificate in Translation Studies from the same institution. She was also a 2022–2023 Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Abroad Fellow at the University of São Paulo and the State University of Campinas. Her writing and translations have been published or are forthcoming in the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Latin American Literary Review, and Comparative Literature. Her research focuses on the meetings between Black and Indigenous theories and practices of sound, voice, and performance in modern and contemporary Latin American poetry.
James Langan works in and between English, Portuguese, French, Spanish, and Catalan. He is based in Providence, Rhode Island, where he recently graduated with honors in Comparative Literature from Brown University. He is chipping away at translations of a number of Brazilian and Argentine writers, such as Lúcio Cardoso and Osvaldo Lamborghini, whose transgressive texts remain largely unknown to Anglophone readers.
Lucas Lazzaretti is a Brazilian professor of philosophy, novelist, poet, and translator. His novels O escritor morre à beira do rio (7Letras, 2021) and Saturno translada: um ensaio romanesco (7Letras, 2022) have been praised by critics for their experimental narrative. His translations from English, Spanish, French, and Danish have been published in Brazil. He recently translated John Williams’ novel Stoner and is currently translating William Gaddis’ novel The Recognitions. He is a two-time nominee for the Prêmio Jabuti for his short story collection Placenta: estudos (7Letras, 2019) and Saturno translada: um ensaio romanesco.
Maria Esther Maciel was born in Patos de Minas and earned a doctorate in Comparative Literature at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG). She was for many years a professor at UFMG and is currently on the faculty of the Universidade Estadual de Campinas, having also held positions at New York University, the École normale supérieure, and Queen Mary University of London. Her many novels and essay collections include Pequena enciclopédia de seres comuns (2021), A memória das coisas (2017), and O livro dos nomes (2008), which received special mention in the 2009 Casa de las Américas Prize and was a finalist for Brazil’s Prêmio Jabuti. She is a member of the Academia Mineira de Letras.
Júlia Irion Martins is a Brazilian American translator. She began her translation work as a pro-bono translator for Freedom House Detroit, where she translated testimonies and clerical documents for asylum seekers. In 2022, she translated Bianca Santana’s Jabuti Award–winning book, Quando me descobri negra (2015), for Fósforo Editora. Martins holds an MA in Comparative Literature from the University of Toronto, and she is currently completing her PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan with a graduate certificate in Digital Studies. Her research focuses on postinternet literature, irony, and autobiography. Martins is based in Washington, DC, where she teaches literature and film courses at American University.
Sam McCracken is a PhD candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan, where he is also enrolled in the Graduate Certificate Program in Digital Studies. He received a Critical Language Scholarship (2022) to support his acquisition of Brazilian Portuguese, and he more recently served as an editorial intern at the São Paulo–based publishing house Editora Todavia during the spring of 2024. McCracken also worked closely with Dr. Yopie Prins throughout the fall of 2023 to assist in the development and curriculum design of the University of Michigan’s upcoming major in Translation. He works between English, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Thomas Mira y Lopez is the author of The Book of Resting Places (Counterpoint Press, 2017). He holds MFAs in both Creative Writing from the University of Arizona and Literary Translation from the University of Iowa. An editor at DIAGRAM and Territory, he is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa.
Marcelo Mirisola is an acclaimed Brazilian author, with more than 20 novels and short stories collections published since 1998. He has authored four plays. Mirisola is also a regular presence in the most important Brazilian newspapers (such as Folha de São Paulo and O Estado de São Paulo) and magazines (such as VIP and Cult). He has maintained columns in some prestigious online outlets (such as the Brazilian branch of Yahoo and the political site Congresso em Foco).
Thereza Nardelli was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. She has a research background in social communications, specializing in visual analysis and gender studies. She works primarily as an illustrator, graphic designer, and animation director/scriptwriter. Currently, the Instagram profile @Zangadas_tatu showcases her original work across tattooing, painting, muralism, and brand collaborations among other projects. Her art has appeared in Marie Claire (Brazil), Vogue (Brazil), the Ibero-American Design Biennial (2020), and Polyester (UK). She also created the animated series “Poderoses” for MTV Latam and “Zangadas,” a feminist series launched in 2023. Among her most renowned works is the image of two hands holding a rose with the phrase “ninguém solta a mão de ninguém” (no one lets go of anyone’s hand), which became a symbol of antifascist resistance in Brazil in 2018.
Michel de Oliveira is a writer, photographer, visual artist, journalist, and professor of Social Communication at the Federal University of Sergipe. Born in Tobias Barreto, Sergipe, de Oliveira holds a doctoral degree in Communication and Information from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul and is the author of two scholarly monographs: Seduzidos pela luz: ou bases antropológicas da fotografia (Imaginalis, 2022) and Saudades eternas: fotografia entre a morte e a sobrevida (Eduel, 2018). In addition to his academic writing and photography practice, de Oliveira is also the author of five book-length, genre-spanning creative works: Meus dedos sentem falta do seu cheiro (Moinhos, 2022), Fatal Error (Moinhos, 2021), O amor são tontas coisas (Moinhos, 2021), O sagrado coração do homem (Moinhos, 2018), and Cólicas, câimbras e outras dores (Oito e Meio, 2017).
Raquel Parrine holds a PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures from the University of Michigan and an MA in Literary Theory and Comparative Literature from the University of São Paulo (USP), with a research focus on feminist and queer literature and visual art in Latin America from the 1980s to the present. She is also a translator, having participated in the feminist collective sycorax in the translation of Silvia Federici’s Caliban and the Witch and Re-enchanting the World, published by Editora Elefante in 2017 and 2022, respectively. Her co-translation of Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study was recently published by Ubu Editora (2024). Parrine lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
Cristina Ferreira Pinto-Bailey is a writer, scholar, and translator. She holds a PhD from Tulane University and has taught at several universities in the United States and Brazil. Her English-language translations of Brazilian poetry, fiction, and non-fiction works by authors such as Conceição Evaristo, Djamila Ribeiro, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Marina Colasanti, and others have appeared in Latin American Literature Today, Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, Afro-Hispanic Review, and other venues. She also translated and wrote the critical introduction to Maria Firmina dos Reis’s 1859 abolitionist novel Ursula (Tagus, 2021). She is currently translating a selection of short stories by Cristiane Sobral.
Natércia Pontes (b. Fortaleza, Ceará, 1980) is a writer and author of the books Copacabana dreams (Cosac Naify, 2012), finalist for the Jabuti Award, and Os tais caquinhos (Companhia das Letras, 2021), among others.
Maria Valéria Rezende (b. 1942) is a nun and educator and was a political activist during Brazil’s military dictatorship. As a young nun, Rezende taught literacy in various regions of Brazil, especially in the impoverished Northeast, and traveled to Europe, China, Algeria, Cuba, Mexico, and other countries. Her many travels and the teachings of Liberation Theology are reflected in her literary work, which most often focuses on the lives and struggles of the poorest in Brazilian society. Rezende has received many important literary awards, including the Jabuti, Brazil’s most prestigious award, for her novel Quarenta dias (2014) and the São Paulo Prize for Literature (2017) and Cuba’s Casa de las Américas Prize (2017), both for Outros cantos (2016). Her novels have been translated into French, Spanish, and Catalan, and her short fiction has appeared in Words Without Borders.
Felipe Fanuel Xavier Rodrigues is an Assistant Professor of English in the Department of Anglo-Germanic Letters at the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). Rodrigues has published articles on the intersections of race, gender, and religion in Black literatures. He received a PhD in Comparative Literature and a BA in English from UERJ. In 2014–2015, he was a CAPES-Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College. Rodrigues was a 2016–2017 FAPERJ Nota 10 Postdoctoral Fellow in Literature at UERJ. He is an elected executive committee member of the Modern Language Association (MLA) Luso-Brazilian Forum (2022–2027). His recent publications include “Maréia and the Emergence of the Ancestral Novel,” published in the Journal of Lusophone Studies, and “The Politics of African Heritage in Black Brazilian Women’s Literature,” published in WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly. He has translated the works of Afro-Brazilian women writers into English, including Conceição Evaristo, Miriam Alves, Eliana Alves Cruz, and Mãe Beata de Yemonjá.
Cidinha da Silva writes literary chronicles and short stories that document the history of contemporary African descendants in Brazil. Focusing primarily on racial and gender relations, religion, sexuality, violence, and poverty, she creates a written art that offers valuable insight into what it means to be a Black woman in current Brazil. She was one of the leaders of the Geledés Institute, an organization of Afro-Brazilian women who fight against racism and sexism and stand up for the empowerment of women of African descent and the Black community at large. She has written about affirmative action and racial relations in Brazil. By the time she published her first literary book in 2006, she was a veteran advocate for racial equality. A critic regarded da Silva’s transition to literature as a move “from ‘activism’ to ‘artvism,’ and a translation of ‘the consciousness of ethnic-racial belonging and its inherent critical view into literary terms.’”
Natalia Timerman is a Brazilian writer and psychiatrist with a medical degree from the Federal University of São Paulo and a doctorate in literature from the University of São Paulo. She is the author of the non-fiction book Desterros (Elefante, 2017), which explores her time working in a prison hospital, the story collection Rachaduras (Quelônio, 2019), a finalist for the Jabuti Award in the short story category, and the novel Copo vazio (Todavia, 2021), which was a finalist for the Candango Prize and will be adapted into a film.
Moema Vilela is a Brazilian author, poet, and professor of Creative Writing and Literature at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS). She is the author of Ter saudade era bom (Dublinense, 2014), Guernica (Edições Udumbara, 2017), Quis dizer (Edições Udumbara, 2017), A dupla vida de Dadá (Penalux, 2019), and Fotos ruins muito boas (7Letras, 2022). Vilela has also published short stories, poems, and essays in several literary magazines and anthologies. She holds a doctorate in Literature-Creative Writing from PUCRS, an MA in Linguistics and Semiotics from the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS), and an MA in Creative Writing from PUCRS. Born in Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul, Vilela lives in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul.
Meg Weeks is a writer, translator, and historian. She holds an MA and a PhD in history from Harvard University and is currently an Assistant Professor at the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Florida. Her writing on topics ranging from feminism and reproductive rights to art, literature, and labor has been published in piauí, Artforum, The Baffler, The New York Review of Books, and n+1, among other outlets. Her translations of Brazilian fiction and non-fiction have appeared in Two Lines, Adi, and Asymptote. In 2024, Duke University Press published her translation of the memoir of Gabriela Leite, the founder of Brazil’s sex-worker movement.