A woman, mother, grandmother, translator and poetess, Sandra Couto was born in Rio de Janeiro and has lived in São Paulo since 1968.

Her first passion was music. Sandra began to study piano when she was six years old. However, her tiny hands prevented her from becoming a soloist. Literature became her next irrisistible attraction. From her early years, she avidly read everything that came to her, sometimes books too big and heavy for her small hands. Her companions during childhood -- loyal companions till her adulthood -- were books by Lígia Fagundes Teles, Machado de Assis, Eça de Queirós, Cecília Meireles, Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Fernando Pessoa, among several other writers.

Since her graduation in Letras, she has devoted herself for many years to literary translation. In March of 2002, she was chosen in the “Talent-Seeking Contest” (Projeto Caça-Talento), promoted by Editora Nativa, to publish her fisrt book of poems (which she did very timidly): “Foto Antiga” (“Old Photo”), which gathers poems written from 1985 on.

Her poetry surprises us. It presents no pompous words nor enigmatic phrases. It is simple and direct (without losing sensitivity), something hard to find among beginners. It’s been said that Sandra is “a poetess who doesn’t hide behind the words, but dares to be simple and to give us all the feeling and suffering of her tiny magic moments, revealing the poetry inscribed in the weave of the things.”