Lília Guerra

Lília Guerra is a Brazilian author, known for works such as O céu para os bastardos (Heaven is for the Bastards). She was born in São Paulo in 1976 into a matriarchal household consisting of her mother, grandmother and sister. Guerra never met her father who had a relationship with her mother as a teenager when he was 76 years old, as she found out from her half-sister.^[1] She was close to her grandmother who she took care of in her later years saying  "A lot of what I write are conversations that I would like to have with people and couldn't. The main one is my grandmother, we spent a lot of time alone, we talked a lot".^[2]

Guerra has two daughters, Barbara and Thaís, and has lived in Cidade Tiradentes in east São Paulo since 1999.^[1] In 2025, Guerra works as a nursing assistant for the Unified Health System (Sistema Único de Saúde - SUS).^[3] She also promotes literacy initiatives in São Paulo.^[4]

Before nursing, she was a maid, as was her mother and grandmother, and she describes it as a right of passage that her daughters were spared from.^[2] Guerra had a close relationship with literature from a young age saying “The library was my home and the books were my toys”.^[5]

Guerra began her publishing career in 2014 with Amor Avenida, inspired by her mother’s life and relationship to Guerra’s father.^[6] Her 2018 collection of short stories Perifobia was a finalist for the 2019 Rio Literature Award. In 2021, Rua do larguinho was published, a novel that centers the stories of ordinary black women working as domestic workers. In 2022, Guerra published Crônicas para colorir a cidade and Novelas que escrevi para o rádio Vol. 1, 2 e 3.^[6] In September 2023, O céu para os bastardos was published, and was a finalist in the São Paulo literature prize.^[7] Her unpublished work Cavco do Oficio was selected as one of 61 pieces for the Carolina Maria de Jesus Award for Literature Produced by Women.^[4]

She says much of her work is dedicated to her grandmother Dona Júlia.^[2]

Guerra centers her work on women on the periphery of Brazilian society, describing the reason she names all her characters as, "We don't have a name anymore, almost never. It's the coffee girl, the cleaning aunt, the lunch girl. I want people to have a name, a face, a story."^[1]