Marina Colasanti was born in Asmara, Eritrea, when it was an Italian colony. She went to Italy during the Second World War, then to Brazil in 1948. Colasanti began studying art at the National School of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro in 1952. After several exhibitions she began to concentrate on her career as a journalist. By 1973 she had worked for the children’s supplement of the ‘Jornal do Brasil’ known as ‘Caderno B’. It was about then that her first literary works ‘Eu Sozinha'(1968) and ‘Nada na Manga'(1975) were published. Beginning in 1977 for a period of 18 years, she worked as a journalist for the women’s journal ‘Nova’ as well as writing for other journals and for television. ‘Uma Idéia Toda Azul'(1979) (‘An Idea All In Blue’) was her published venture into literature for children. Colasanti drew her own illustrations for several of her children’s books.
A major part of her work focuses on the role of women in modern society. Her main female figures reflect conventional value systems and deal with conventional rules that merely feign to promise women shelter. In the quest to find their own identity, her female characters are confronted with new experiences and removed from the traditional understanding of their roles.
Colasanti was nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Prize in 1994. She is married to the poet Affonso Romano de Sant’ Anna, has two daughters and lives in Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro.
© international literature festival berlin