One of the most influential and original Brazilian writers of short fiction of the 1980s and '90s, Caio Fernando Abreu is the author of twelve story collections set and published during the military dictatorship and the AIDS epidemic in Brazil. He has been awarded major literary prizes, including the prestigious Jabuti Prize for Fiction a total of three times. He died of AIDS in Porto Alegre in 1996. He was 47 years old.

Angélica Freitas is an acclaimed Brazilian poet whose poetry addresses topics of feminism and LGBTQ issues, in dialogue with poetics of the past. Her first collection, Rilke Shake, was translated into English by Hilary Kaplan, winning both the Best Translated Book Award for poetry and the National Translation Award for poetry in 2016. "A Clean Woman" is from her second collection, Um útero é tamanho de um punho [A womb is the size of a fist], which recently became the subject of attempted censorship in the state assembly of Santa Catarina, Brazil.

Carol Bensimon was born in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, in 1982. She is the author of the story collection Pó de parede and three novels, Sinuca embaixo d'água, O clube dos jardineiros de Fumaça, and Todos nós adorávamos caubóis, the latter published in English translation as We All Loved Cowboys (Transit Books). In 2012, Carol was selected by Granta as one of the Best Young Brazilian Novelists. She lives in Mendocino, California.
Et al...