Caio Fernando Abreu (b. 1948, Porto Alegre) was one of the most influential Brazilian writers of the 1970s and 80s, despite his work remaining underrecognized outside of Brazil. The author of 20 books, including 12 story collections and two novels, he has been awarded major literary prizes, including the prestigious Jabuti Prize for Fiction a total of three times. During the military dictatorship in Brazil (1964-1985), his homoerotic writing was heavily censored and he was soon put on a wanted list. He found refuge in the literary counterculture established at the time by like-minded writers and friends Hilda Hilst and Dalton Trevisan and eventually by going into self-exile in Europe. In 1994, while living in France, he tested HIV positive. He died two years later in his hometown. He was 47 years old.

Translator bio:

Bruna Dantas Lobato was born and raised in Natal, Brazil. A graduate of Bennington College, she received her MFA in Fiction from New York University and is currently an Iowa Arts Fellow and MFA candidate in Literary Translation at the University of Iowa. Her stories, essays, and translations from Portuguese have appeared or are forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, A Public Space, BOMB, and elsewhere. She was a 2018 A Public Space Fellow, a 2019 PEN/Heim recipient, and a Yaddo resident. In 2022, she published the first English translation of Abreu with his collection Moldy Strawberries (Archipelago), and in 2024, she published her first novel, The Blue Hours.