João Ximenes Braga

João Ximenes Braga was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1970 and is an author, journalist, and award-winning screenwriter. He began his career in professional journalism at the newspaper O Globo where he reported on police matters, politics, literature and fashion, and wrote a column for 14 years. He was also a correspondent in New York between 1997 and 2000. In 2002, he quit journalism and focussed on writing fiction full-time. He has published four books including two novels, Porra (Damn) and Juízo (Judgement), the short story collection A Mulher que Transou com o Cavalo e Outras Histórias (The Woman who Slept with the Horse and Other Stories) and a collection of his journalistic work published in O Globo, A Dominatrix Gorda (The Fat Dominatrix). In 2005 he started working in television where he collaborated on two telenovelas, Paraíso Tropical (Tropical Paradise) and Insensato Coração (Foolish Heart). In 2012, he released his first telenovela, Lado a Lado (Side by Side), co-written with Claudia Lage which received a 2013 International Emmy Award. He is currently working on a prime-time telenovela to be released in 2015, about different social classes in the small neighbourhood of Leme in Rio de Janeiro.