BIOGRAPHY

Bella Santiago is from Joo Pessoa, state of Paraba in Brazil. She was born on December 7, 1953, and very early she showed interest for arts and literature. She was only six, when she started taking English and Classical Ballet classes. Ballet, her first artistic aspiration, she quit when she was 14. However, she kept studying English till she graduated. She wrote her first poem, when she was 12 and while in high school, she acted in some amateur theater. She has always liked drawing and searched the means that would best suit the expression of her artistic personality. Her interest for languages and culture from other countries led her to participate in a cultural exchange program in the United States, where she lived for some months in the year 1971. Brazil was living a military dictatorship, which restricted the access to the liberal thought and inhibited the divergent political positions. The time spent in the United States provided a direct contact with the hippie counterculture movement and the political protestations from the anti-racists and pacifists movements. It was by that time that she met Marcuse, Eros and the Civilization, which definitely influenced her art and life. Back to Brazil, she started taking Literature at Universidade Federal da Paraba, and interrupted it in 1975, for spending time in Paris. In Paris, she studied French and became 'educated' in Arts, as she likes to say, when she refers to that Parisian period in which she attended museums, galleries and bookstores. She resumed the Literature course in 1976 and graduated in 1978. By that time, Literature was already privileged among her previous artistic interests. Painting also remained as one of her favorite expression channels. The knowledge acquired in foreign languages, especially English, guided her professional activities. Her first job was in a governmental body, the Disclosure and Tourism Bureau of Paraba State Government, where she started as a university intern and kept for some time, after finishing the course. Later, she moved to the city of Braslia, where she lived for seven years. There, she worked for some months at the Foreign Affairs Office and afterwards, at the Ministry of Education, where she stayed till she retired in 1999. Still living in Braslia, she started her Master's degree course in Literature (Theoretical Literature) at the Universidade de Braslia - UNB -, and finished it in 1983. The thesis she defended was about Graciliano Ramos's work. In 1992, she published her first poems book Paisagens do Corao (Heart Landscapes) and she received an award from the local press Prmio Domingos Svio, as a

Discovery in Paraba's Literature. In 1993, she published Poemas do Desmedido Amor (Poems of Unmeasurable Love), and in 1998, she published a novel Histrias da Arca da Velha (Stories of the Old Lady's Chest), which is already in the second edition (2003). Her texts are shown in anthologies of Paraba's literature. Since 1996, she has also dedicated her time to painting. She has already accomplished three individual exhibitions and participated in collective ones, in Brazil and abroad.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. INDIVIDUAL BOOKS 1. PAISAGENS DO CORAO (Heart Landscapes) Publisher: EDA Joo Pessoa - PB - 1992 - Poetry 2. POEMAS DO DESMEDIDO AMOR (Poems of Unmeasurable Love) Publisher: Idia - Joo Pessoa - PB - 1993 - Poetry 3. HISTRIAS DA ARCA DA VELHA (Stories of the Old Lady's Chest) Publisher: Idia - Joo Pessoa - PB - 1998 - Poetry 4. REVISTA LETRAS E ARTES (magazine) Brazilian Northeast Arts and Literature Academy - Recife - PE - 2005 5. Brazilian Northeast Arts and Literature Academy Magazine - Sal da Terra - PB - 2006 6. PARABA'S AUTHORS ANTHOLOGY Publisher: Grafset - Joo Pessoa - PB - 2005 - Prose