Rodrigo de Souza Leão was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1965 and died in a psychiatric clinic in Rio in 2008, shortly after his extraordinary autobiographical novel All Dogs are Blue was published. Due to his mental fragility, Rodrigo de Souza Leão rarely left his house, and yet he used social media, blogging, and e-mail, becoming close friends with a large number of Brazilian writers and poets who hold him in high regard today. His death was marked by a flood of poems in homage to him.

During his lifetime, Souza Leão was a prolific writer, publishing more than ten books of poetry and co-founding and co-editing one of Brazil’s most important poetry magazines, Zunái. Since his death, additional works of fiction have been published to widespread acclaim. All Dogs are Blue has been adapted for the stage, and his outsider art has been presented in an individual exhibition at Rio’s Museum of Modern Art, entitled “Everything Will be the Color You Want it to Be.”