Alexandra Lucas Coelho

Alexandra Lucas Coelho is a journalist and writer. She has worked as a staff reporter, editor and foreign correspondent for 30 years, covering several crises and conflicts, starting by the fall of the USSR and the war in Bosnia. From 2001 on she wrote extensively about the Middle East and Central Asia but also about Mexico and Brazil. She has served as a correspondent in Jerusalem and Rio de Janeiro, and for her work been the recipient of major journalistic awards in Portugal. She has published fourteen books: eight works of non-fiction, four novels and two illustrated storybook for children. Her first novel, E a Noite Roda (2012), a love story set mostly in Israel and Palestine, won the Portuguese Writers Association Grand-Prize. Her second novel, O Meu Amante de Domingo (2014), a satire set in a crisis-stricken Portugal, was Time Out Book of the Year. Deus-dará (2016), her third novel, crossing centuries of Brazilian colonial history from the point of view of present day Rio de Janeiro, was a finalist for the Portuguese Writers Association Grand-Prize. Her fourth novel, A Nossa Alegria Chegou (2018), set in an imagined place on Earth was published in September 2018. Coelho’s non-fiction narrative Viva México (2010), a journey from Ciudad Juárez to the Mayan lands, was a finalist for the Luso-Brazilian PT Literature Prize. Cinco Voltas na Bahia e um Beijo para Caetano Veloso (2019) won the Portuguese Writers Association Prize for Travel Literature.