Profile

Antonio Carlos Secchin was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1952. He is professor emeritus of Brazilian Literature at UFRJ’s Faculty of Letters and holds a PhD in Letters from the same university.

He is a poet with eight published books, including Desdizer (2017), Cantar amigo (2017) and Todos os ventos, winner of three awards for best book of its kind in Brazil in 2002.

Essayist, author of João Cabral; a poesia do menos, winner of three national prizes, including the Sílvio Romero, awarded by the ABL (Brazilian Academy of Letters) in 1987. He has organized several selections and complete works by Brazilian poets (Castro Alves, Manuel Bandeira, Cecília Meireles, João Cabral de Melo Neto, Ferreira Gullar). His book Percursos da poesia brasileira, do século XVIII ao XXI won the APCA Award (Associação Paulista dos Críticos de Arte) as the best work of essays published in the country in 2018, Papéis de prosa and Papéis de poesia II were released by Editora da UNESP in 2022.

He has given more than six hundred lectures in various states of the country and abroad. He has been a guest professor at the Universities of Barcelona, Bordeaux, California, Lisbon, Merida, Mexico, Los Angeles, Naples, Paris (Sorbonne), Rennes and Rome.

He is the author of around seven hundred texts (poems, short stories, essays) published in the main Brazilian and international literary journals.

Elected in June 2004, he became the youngest member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. He is currently the General Secretary (vice-president) of the institution.

In 2013, the UFRJ publishing house published Secchin: a life in letters, a tribute from the University to his work in the fields of teaching, essayism, literary creation (poetry and fiction) and bibliophilia.

In 2019, he was awarded the Grand Prize for the City of Rio de Janeiro by the Carioca Academy of Letters for his work as a whole.