Adriana Lisboa was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1970. She has published, among other books, the novels Symphony in White (winner of the José Saramago Award), Crow Blue (chosen a book of the year by The Independent) and Hut of Fallen Persimmons (winner of a Japan Foundation Fellowship). She has also published poetry collections, short stories, and books for children. Her poems and stories have appeared in Modern Poetry in Translation, Asymptote, Granta, and Revista Casa de las Américas, among others. Her books have been published in more than twenty countries.
Adriana has a MA in Brazilian Literature and a PhD in Comparative Literature from Rio de Janeiro State University. She was a visiting scholar at The International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto, and at the University of New Mexico, as well as writer in residence at the University of California Berkeley. She has taught at the University of Texas at Austin, at the Spanish and Portuguese Department.
She has lived in France, New Zealand and the United States - where she currently resides, in Austin, Texas.
photo by Julie Harris (2012)
novels
Barrel organ of the worlds (Realejo dos mundos, 2023)
All Saints (Todos os santos, 2019)
Hanoi (2013)
Crow Blue (Azul corvo, 2010)
Hut of Fallen Persimmons (Rakushisha, 2007)
Colombine's Kiss (Um beijo de colombina, 2003)
Symphony in White (Sinfonia em branco, 2001)
The Threads of Memory (Os fios da memória, 1999 - out of print)
poetry
O vivo (2021)
Adrift (Deriva, 2019)
Equator (2019) - selected poems translated into English
Tiny Melody (Pequena Música, 2018)
Part of the Landscape (Parte da paisagem, 2014)
memoir
All of Time (Todo o tempo que existe, 2022)
short stories
Success (O sucesso, 2016)
Calligraphies (Caligrafias, 2004, with original drawings by Gianguido Bonfanti)
for children and young adults
A King Without Majesty (Um rei sem majestade, 2018)
The Siren and the Butterfly Hunter (A sereia e o caçador de borboletas, 2010)
The Heart Sometimes Stops Beating (O coração às vezes para de bater, 2007)
Japanese Folk Tales (Contos populares japoneses, 2007)
A Tongue Made of Scraps (Língua de trapos, 2005)
Among Adriana's awards are the José Saramago Prize for Symphony in White, a Japan Foundation Fellowship for Hut of Fallen Persimmons, an honorary mention by the Casa de las Américas Award for the poetry collection Pequena música, a fellowship from the Brazilian National Library, and the Newcomer of the Year Award from the Brazilian section of IBBY (the International Board on Books for Young People) for her book of poetry for children, Língua de trapos (A Tongue Made of Scraps).
In 2007, Hay Festival/Bogota World Book Capital selected her as one of the thirty-nine highest profile young Latin American writers.
In 2014, she was the Distinguished Brazilian Writer in Residence at the University of California, Berkeley. She was also a visiting researcher at the International Reserach Center for Japanese Studies / Nichibunken, in Kyoto, at the University of New Mexico, and at the University of Texas, Austin.
She was a guest lecturer at Stanford, the University of Chicago, Yale, Princeton, Smith College, Tulane, the Sorbonne, Leiden University, Leeds University, Peking University, and the University of Hamburg, among others. She has participated as guest at events such as the Frankfurt Book Fair, the Paris Salon du Livre, the Salon du Livre d'Amérique Latine, Hay Festival, FLIP, FlipSide, the Miami Book Fair, Rio de Janeiro Book Biennial, and others.
education, music and translations
Adriana Lisboa has a BFA in Music/Flute Performance from Uni-Rio (Rio de Janeiro Federal State University), a MFA in Brazilian Literature and a PhD in Comparative Literature from UERJ (Rio de Janeiro State University).
She performed as a singer in France at age eighteen, and worked as a music teacher in Rio until her late twenties. Having also worked as a translator for over two decades, she translated into Portuguese, among other books, Hiroshima mon amour and Moderato cantabile, by Marguerite Duras, Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë, No Country for Old Men and The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, The Door, poems by Margaret Atwood, A Voice from Elsewhere, by Maurice Blanchot, and, in collaboration with Mariana Ianelli, a selection of 40 poems by José Lezama Lima.