Luciany Aparecida

Luciany Aparecida Alves Santos (born 1982) is a Brazilian writer, researcher, and professor. While she is originally from the Charco region in the Vale do Jiquiriçá in Bahia state, she now lives in São Paulo and is a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP). She is best known for her recent novel, Mata Doce, which was a finalist for the Prêmio Jabuti in 2024 and won the Prêmio São Paulo de Literatura (The São Paulo Literature Award) in 2024 under the category Best Novel of 2023.

Biography and personal life Luciany Aparecida was born in 1982 in Jaguaquara, in the Jequiriçá Valley of Bahia, Brazil. She was raised in a rural community called Charco in rural Irajuba, and municipality of Santa Inês, Bahia. Her mother, Luci Iara Vieira Alves, had complications during labor and was wrongly declared deceased. During the false alarm, her cousin Nilza named the surviving child Aparecida, and then Luci recovered. So, the name Luciany Aparecida came from the combination of her mother's name and Our Lady, to whom the miracle is attributed.

Until she was five years old, Aparecida was raised in her grandparents' home, alongside her mother, seven aunts, and six uncles. Being surrounded by adults, the elderly, and various forms of media, Luciany heard many stories and ideas from her family and those around her. However, at age five, her grandmother, Maria Ruth Vieira, took her to Santa Inês, where they lived alone for Luciany to go to school and receive a better education than what was available in Charco.

Education and career Aparecida completed her undergraduate education in Vernacular Letters at the State University of Feira de Santana (UEFS) in 2007, and her Master's (2011) and Doctorate (2015) degrees in Letters from the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB). Under the scope of literary criticism, the author's studies emphasize literary theory, contemporary literature, and the intersectionality between history, memory, ancestrality, afro-diasporic culture, immigration, nationality, and performances. Her doctorate thesis received the evaluation "approved with distinction" due to her study of Poemário Modelosvivos (2010), by Ricardo Aleixo.

Aesthetic signatures Luciany Aparecida, in addition to her own name, has three primary pseudonyms, or, as she prefers to call them, aesthetic signatures: Ruth Ducaso, Margô Paraíso, and Antônio Peixôtro.As I invent names, heteronyms, I do not elaborate on only a creative literary work. So, I am not allowed, in this context rank with colonizer violence (patriarchy, toxic masculinity, racism, and homophobia), to just be creative. I always have to be creative and something more. Thus I say that I create, with the signatures, a theatrical, anti-colonizer creation. And not a heteronym marked by some personal tradition. which texts were often melancholic, depressive, or dealt with suicide.