# Rita Ferro (writer)

Rita Ferro (born 1955) is a Portuguese writer, journalist, playwright and teacher.

## Early life

Rita Maria Roquette de Quadros Ferro Ochôa was born on 26 February 1955 in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon, the daughter of writer and philosopher António Quadros [pt ] and Paulina Roquette Ferro. Her paternal grandmother was the writer Fernanda de Castro, and her paternal grandfather was António Ferro a writer, journalist, and politician who was associated with the repressive Estado Novo regime in the mid-20th Century. Ferro studied design, specializing in marketing. Following internships in Brazil, Spain, the USA and the United Kingdom, she taught advertising at the Instituto de Arte, Design e Empresa (Institute of Art, Design and Enterprise - IADE), which her father had founded in 1969. She also worked as an advertising writer for Reader’s Digest in Portugal and for other publishers.

## Writing

Ferro began her literary career in 1990, with the publication of the novel O Nó na Garganta, which sold more than 50,000 copies. Since then, she has written more than 20 novels, as well as biographies, youth literature and plays. She has been a judge for literary awards and at film festivals and has published articles in magazines and newspapers, such as Revista LER, the Portuguese edition of Marie Claire, Diário de Notícias and A Capital. She also worked on a television programme for the Portuguese national broadcaster, RTP, and has been on several radio programmes. In 2011 she published her first autobiographical novel, A menina é filha de quem? (Whose daughter is she?), which received the Portuguese PEN Club award for prose fiction in 2012. Ferro also teaches courses in creative writing and has written a television script and two theatrical plays.

## Publications

A list of Ferro's main publications follows:

### Novels

* O nó na garganta (Dom Quixote, 1990)
* O vestido de lantejoulas (Dom Quixote, 1991)
* O vento e a lua (Dom Quixote, 1992)
* Por instinto (Editorial Notícias, 2000)
* Os filhos da mãe (Dom Quixote, 2000)
* A menina dança? (Dom Quixote, 2002)
* Uma mulher não chora (Dom Quixote, 2002)
* És Meu! (Dom Quixote, 2003)
* Não me contes o fim (Dom Quixote, 2005)
* As caras da Mãe (Dom Quixote, 2006)
* Responde se és Homem (Dom Quixote, 2007)
* 13 gotas ao deitar (Oficina do Livro, 2009)
* 4 & 1 Quarto (Dom Quixote, 2009)
* Chocolate (2010)
* A menina é filha de quem? (Dom Quixote, 2011)
* Veneza pode esperar – Diário 1 (Dom Quixote, 2013) (ISBN 978-972-2054-06-5)
* A secretária de Sidónio Paes (Glaciar), 2014) (ISBN 978-989-8776-12-9)
* Só se morre uma vez – Diário 2 (Dom Quixote, 2015)
* Um amante no Porto (Dom Quixote, 2018)
* Os pássaros cantam em grego – Diário 3 (Dom Quixote, 2020)

### Chronicles

* Por tudo e por nada (Dom Quixote, 2002)
* Os cromos de Rita Ferro (Dom Quixote, 2003)
* Sexo na desportiva (Dom Quixote, 2007)

### Other publications

* Retrato de uma família, with Mafalda Ferro (1999)
* Desculpe lá, mãe!, with Marta Gautier (1998)
* Fotobiografia de Sebastião Alves, with Ana Vidal (2004)
* Querida menopausa, with Helena Sacadura Cabral (2005)
* As caras da Mãe (2005)
* 13 gotas ao deitar, in collaboration with Alice Vieira, Catarina Fonseca, Leonor Xavier, Luísa Beltrão and Rosa Lobato de Faria (2009)
* O falcão e a formiga