Known as “ecological author,” Leonardo Fróes has lived for more than 40 years in the countryside with his wife. Born in 1941 in Itaperuna, raised in Rio de Janeiro, and having lived in New York, Paris and Berlin, Fróes left urban life in order to live surrounded by and deeply immersed in nature. Having lived in the country for so many years, he no longer sees nature--trees, animals, mountains and rivers--as different from him, something that is evidenced in his poetry.

Primarily devoted to translation, Fróes won the Paulo Rónai Prize, in 1998. He has translated canonical English-language authors such as William Faulkner, Rabindranath Tagore, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and Percy Bysshe Shelley as well as scientific writers such as Edward Osborne Wilson and Helmut Sick. Besides writing entries for the Encyclopædia Britannica, he also worked as a journalist for dailies such Jornal do Brasil, O Globo, and Jornal da Tarde, where he was responsible for the Verde (Green) column, the first one dedicated to ecological issues in Brazil.

As a poet, Fróes won the important Premio Jabuti in 1996 for his book Argumentos invisíveis (1995). Other books of poetry include: Língua Franca (1968), Esqueci de avisar que estou vivo (1973), and O anjo tigrado (1975).