Rachel de Queiroz

Rachel de Queiroz (Fortaleza, 1910 - Rio de Janeiro, 2003) was a Brazilian writer in Portuguese, also known as a translator, journalist and playwright. A central figure of the social novel of Brazil's Northeast, she is considered by many critics the most important woman writer Brazil has produced.

Born in Fortaleza, the capital of the state of Ceará, she came from a family with ties to the literary tradition of José de Alencar. A drought drove her family first to Rio de Janeiro in 1917 and then to Belém, before they returned to Fortaleza. As a young woman she began publishing modernist-style chronicles and poems in the local press under a pen name. In 1930 her novel O Quinze, about the struggle of northeastern people against drought and poverty, brought her national attention. She went on to write other socially engaged novels, such as João Miguel and Caminho de pedras, which paired social concerns with close psychological analysis of her characters. In 1939 she moved to Rio de Janeiro, where she established herself as an author.

In her youth she was drawn to the political left, and in 1937 she was jailed in Fortaleza on charges of communism. Her views later shifted: she supported the military coup of 1964, and copies of her novels are said to have been burned at rallies backing the dictatorship. She also wrote chronicles, plays and children's books. In 1977 she became the first woman to join the Brazilian Academy of Letters, and in 1993 she received the Camões Prize, the most prestigious award in Portuguese-language literature, again as the first woman to do so. She died in her apartment in Rio a few days before her 93rd birthday. Her legacy lives on above all in the Northeastern novel, a tradition she helped shape.