Brazilian literature is written in the Portuguese language by Brazilians or in Brazil, even if prior to Brazil's independence from Portugal, in 1822. During the 20th century Brazilian literature gradually shifted to a different and more Brazilian literary use of the Portuguese language.

The first extant document that might be considered Brazilian literature is the Carta de Pero Vaz de Caminha (Pero Vaz de Caminha's letter). It is written by Pero Vaz de Caminha to Manuel I of Portugal, which contains a description of what Brazil looked like in 1500. Journals of voyagers and descriptive treatises on "Portuguese America" dominated the literary production for the next two centuries, including well-known accounts by Jean de Léry and Hans Staden, whose story of his encounter with the Tupi Indians on the coast of São Paulo was extraordinarily influential for European conceptions of the New World.

A few more explicitly literary examples survive from this period, such as Basílio da Gama's epic poem celebrating the conquest of the Missions by the Portuguese, and the work of Gregório de Mattos, a 17th century lawyer from Salvador who produced a sizable amount of satirical, religious, and secular poetry. Matos drew heavily from Baroque influences such as the Spanish poets Luis de Góngora and Francisco de Quevedo.

Ana Maria Machado was born in 1941 in Rio de Janeiro and is, alongside Lygia Bojunga Nunes and Ruth Rocha, one of the most significant children's book authors in Brazil. She started her career as a painter in Rio de Janeiro and New York City. After studying Romance languages she did a PhD with Roland Barthes at the 'École pratique des hautes études' in Paris. She worked as journalist for the magazine 'Elle' in Paris and the BBC in London. In 1979, she opened the first children’s literature bookshop in Brazil, 'Malasartes'.

In 1969, Ana Maria Machado started to write. "I belong to that generation of writers who began to write during the military dictatorship, as children’s literature, alongside poetry and song texts, were amongst the few literary forms with which, through the poetic and symbolic use of language, you could make the ideas of a joie de vivre, individual freedom and respect for human rights known." Her story 'Menina Bonita do laço de fita' (1986) about a white and a black rabbit who marry and have a whole hoard of black, white and black and white patterned children, is a charming book about the living together of diverse ethnic groups. In 'Era uma vez um tirano' (1982) three children defy a tyrant who has forbidden colour, thoughts and any happiness. Without pointing fingers, Ana Maria Machado always dresses up her messages in humorous stories and trusts the ability of her young readers to also read between the lines.

Gregory Rabassa (born 9 March 1922) is a literary translator from Spanish and Portuguese to English who currently teaches at Queens College.

Rabassa was born in Yonkers, New York, U.S., into a family headed by a Cuban émigré. After serving during World War II as an OSS cryptographer and receiving a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth, Rabassa enrolled as a graduate student at Columbia University, where he eventually earned a doctorate. He taught at Columbia for over two decades before accepting a position at Queens College.

He works primarily in Spanish and Portuguese. He has produced English-language versions of the works of several major Latin American novelists, including Julio Cortázar, Jorge Amado and Gabriel García Márquez. On the advice of Cortázar, García Márquez waited three years for Rabassa's schedule to become open so that he could translate One Hundred Years of Solitude. He later declared Rabassa's translation to be superior to his own Spanish original.

Rabassa had a particularly close and productive working relation with Cortázar, with whom he shared lifelong passions for jazz and wordplay. For his version of Cortázar's novel, Hopscotch, Rabassa split the inaugural U.S. National Book Award in category Translation.