Meet Local Authors BRYNN BARINEAU and MARY MCMYNE

"From Atlanta to Washington DC to Rio de Janeiro to Vitoria, Brazil and finally back to Atlanta in June 2020. (Yes. 2020.) In high school, I studied French. In college, Arabic. In grad school, I studied political campaigns in India. I considered a lot of life possibilities but living in Brazil, anywhere in South America, was never one of them. Then I met and married the smartest man I’ve ever known, who happened to be from Rio de Janeiro.

After four years in Rio, we moved to Vitoria where our beautiful daughter was born. I taught Brazilian high school students American curriculum language arts and economics. Thanks to me there are at least 200 Brazilians who understand how the US Federal Reserve System works. At least we all did at the time.

I’ve been a reader my whole life but only began writing seriously when I started blogging about my experiences as an American in Brazil shortly after arriving in 2006. I contributed essays to the anthologies Once Upon an Expat and Knocked Up Abroad Again. My guest posts and articles appeared on Multicultural Kids Blog, Pack-N-Go Girls, and Hackwriters.com.

After my daughter was born in 2011, I tried to find picture books in English about Brazil for my little Brazilian-American and came up with almost nothing. I expanded my search to chapter books, young adult and with growing disbelief I looked for any fiction book with a connection to Brazil.

My research made one thing clear. In the United States, it’s easier to find a book set in outer space than in Brazil.

Eventually I had a radical idea. Maybe I could write the books I wanted to find.

After nine years of writing, three shelved novels, around 200 query letters, two years out on submission to editors, my first novel, Jaguars and Other Game, debuted in November, 2022. My second novel, Jungle of Ashes will launch with History Through Fiction on May 19, 2026 along with the re-release of Jaguars and Other Game."

Mary McMyne is the award-winning author of the novels The Book of Gothel and A Rose by Any Other Name, and the poetry chapbook Wolf Skin. Her poetry, essays, and short stories have appeared in places like Gulf Coast, Redivider, Southern Humanities Review, Strange Horizons, and Apex Magazine. A graduate of the New York University MFA program, she is poetry editor for Enchanted Living.

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