Fernando José Branco Pinto do Amaral was born in Lisbon in 1960. He attended the Faculty of Medicine of Lisbon between 1978 and 1982, but abandoned the course in the 4th year, graduating in Modern Languages ¿¿and Literature (1986) and completing his Master's (1990) and the PhD (1998) in Portuguese Literature. He obtained an average of 17 in the Bachelor's degree, a Very Good grade in the Master's and approval for Distinction and Praise in the Doctorate. He is a professor at the Faculty of Arts of Lisbon (Department of Romance Literature). He has published around 20 books since 1990 (poetry, fiction, essay, dissemination) and translated poems by Baudelaire, Verlaine, Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriela Mistral. He organized and prefaced editions of Camões, Bocage, Antero de Quental, Cesário Verde, Florbela Espanca, Ruy Cinatti, Tomaz Kim and Luís Miguel Nava, among other authors. Since 1997, he has been a member of the board of the Luís Miguel Nava Foundation and the Editorial Board of the poetry magazine Relâmpago. He was curator of the exhibition 100 Livros do Século (CCB, 1998), having also curated the Portuguese presence at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1998 and 1999, as well as at the Geneva Book Fair in 2001 and at LIBER – Book Fair in Barcelona in 2002. He was a regular literary critic at JL, Público, Diário de Notícias, Colóquio – Letras and other publications. He has been a member of the jury of numerous literary awards, being a permanent member of the jury of the Dom Dinis Prize, of the Casa de Mateus Foundation. He has also won several awards as a poet, essayist and translator. His «Fado da Saudade», sung by Carlos do Carmo and included in the film Fados, by Carlos Saura, received the Goya Prize in Spain in the category of best original song in 2008. His book of poems Manual de Cardiologia (Dom Quixote, 2016) received the PEN Club Prize in 2017. He has two poetry books translated into Spanish and published in Spain: the anthology Exactamente mi vida (Extremadura Reg. Edition, 2009) and La luz de la dawn (Sequitur Edition, 2010) and is included in Portuguese poetry anthologies published in several countries. Between December 2009 and April 2017, he served as commissioner of the National Reading Plan (Ministry of Education).