João Gilberto Noll

João Gilberto Noll (1946 - 2017) was born in Porto Alegre in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul in 1946 and is the author of 19 books. In the late 1960s, he wrote for the newspapers Folha da Manhã and Última Hora. Noll published his first short story in the 1970 anthology Roda de Fogo (Wheel of Fire), but his more formal literary debut came in 1980 when his first short story collection O Cego e a Dançarina (The Blind Man and the Dancer) was released, for which he received three literary prizes. One of the stories from the collection, ‘Alguma Coisa Urgentemente’ (Something Urgently), was the basis for the film Nunca Fomos Tão Felizes ('Happier Than Ever') in 1983. In the late 1990s, he taught Brazilian Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002. From 1998 to 2001 Noll published a twice-weekly series of short stories in the major São Paulo daily Folha de São Paulo, and in 2004 began to publish longer stories every two weeks in the daily Correio Braziliense. His most recent works include the novels A Céu Aberto (The Open Sky, 1996), Canoas e Marolas (Canoes and Waves, 1999), Berkeley em Bellagio (Berkeley in Bellagio, 2002), Lorde (Lord, 2004), and the short story collections Mínimos Múltiplos Comuns (Minimum Common Multiples, 2003) and A Máquina de Ser (The Machine of Being, 2006). He has won more than ten literary awards, including receiving the Jabuti Prize 5 times, and his novel Harmada made Bravo! magazine’s list of 100 essential Brazilian books of all time.