Diary of a Brazilian Gringo by Mike Kepp

Michael Kepp was born in the claustrophobic, mid-western city of St. Louis, Missouri on March 4, 1950. In 1968, he escaped, graduated with a B.A in zoology and an M.A. in Cinema Studies. After a long period of personal and professional wandering, including several years of hitch-hiking and manual-labor jobs, he found journalism. During this fugitive’s trajectory, he lived in Indiana, Chicago, Paris, New York, Miami, and Berkeley, California.

In January of 1983, feeling more and more like a stranger in a strange land and influenced by Hollywood movies whose fugitives inevitably end up in Rio de Janeiro, Michael bought a one-way ticket there and almost immediately felt at home. He began doing freelance journalism for the Associated Press, Time magazine, Newsweek magazine, and The Wall Street Journal, and now works for a variety of specialized U.S. business and ecological publications.

In 1988, Michael again began to flee - this time from journalism’s creative straightjacket - by starting to write essays for Brazilian newspapers. Essays were also his way of putting his thoughts on paper to see what they looked like. They eventually began to look like a book. Visit his website.