The Brazilian novelist, playwright and screen-play writer Patricia Melo was born in Sao Paulo and currently lives in Rio de Janeiro. The city was the inspiration and location for a series of best-selling novels which document, in both raw and poignant detail, life in the favelas (shanty towns) which encircle the city's residential areas, and launched her highly successful career.

In 1995 The Killer received the Prix Feminina and Deux Oceans awards in France and the Krimi Pris (prize) in Germany. It was subsequently made into a feature which won the Best Film award at the San Francisco Film Festival and pre-dated by several years the international success of the movie City of God. Her follow-up novel Inferno (2002) won her Brazil's prestigious Jabuti Prize for Literature.

The archetypal Brazilian favela is the backdrop for The Killer, which documents the daily dramas and tragedies experienced by young people and their families living amongst - and involved in - deadly drug wars. Melo's visits into the communities and stories from her cleaner, inspired her raw but sensitive writing.

The next major work, Black Waltz, excavated an entirely different world - that of the classical conductor. But it remains an exploration of deep emotions and family relationships. It was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Melo's recent novel Lost World (2006) returns to the favela characters; "Its protagonist is my dear friend Maiquel - from The Killer," she says. It is his struggle for survival now as a young man. Her contribution to the LISTEN campaign, the short story Memoirs of a Black Automaton, continues the theme.