Eliane Brum

Eliane Brum is a Brazilian writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. She is one of Brazil’s most award-winning reporters and in 2021 received the Maria Moors Cabot Prize from Columbia University for her body of work. She was chosen the World’s Top Thinker of 2025 by the prestigious British magazine Prospect.

She is the creator, founder, and director of the Amazon-based trilingual platform Sumaúma – Journalism from the Center of the World (sumauma.com) and a columnist for the international section of the Spanish newspaper El País.

She has published nine books and directed four documentaries. Her titles in English translation include Banzeiro Òkòtó: The Amazon as the Center of the World (Graywolf/Indigo, 2023); The Collector of Leftover Souls (Graywolf/Granta, 2019), longlisted for a National Book Award and a finalist for the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature; and the novel One Two (Amazon Crossing, 2014). Some of her books have also been translated into Italian, German, French, Spanish, Polish, Bulgarian, and Mandarin. She directed or co-directed the documentaries Uma história severina; Gretchen Filme Estrada; Eu+1: uma jornada de saúde mental na Amazônia; and Laerte-se. She lives in Altamira, Middle Xingu, in the Brazilian Amazon Forest.