Stephanie Renee Dos Santos

Long standing, I have loved the natural world and its wonders, along with the arts. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, near the glacier covered North Cascades Mountains in Washington State. As a child, I hiked soft pine-needled trails in forests of Douglas fir and scented cedar along the waters of the Salish Sea.

I have lived, worked, and studied in West Africa, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Adventure defines my life; as does my love of the unknown and the visual arts and literature of the world. I've driven the Pan-American Highway and explored the artistic wonders along the way; owned a camel in the Sahara desert of Niger, West Africa and created with nomadic artists; painted endangered plants in the Peruvian Amazon; rowed an open dory for forty days among the obscure islands off the coast of Brazil where I started writing my first historical novel; and trekked in the Himalayas of Nepal seeking ancient matriarchal meditative sites.

It is no wonder I write fiction, for it is yet another way to explore — to journey.

I write art-inspired historical fiction about little-known or overlooked artists, art innovations and movements, those who’ve influenced and shaped the world of art.

My debut historical novel, Cut From The Earth, is a story of a Portuguese tile maker who harbors an illicit female designer to free the enslaved with art and escape the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755. This is first book of The Tile Maker Series.

Also, I write memoir. When She Wakes, an anthology of women's firsthand accounts of Kundalini awakening is underway.

I have a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Arts from Whitman College. I have published fiction in literary journals American Athenaeum and Lalitamba. I've written features for the Historical Novel Review and created interview book review series for the Historical Novel Society. I speak publicly at Historical Novel Society conferences in the United States and England.

I divide my time between the mountains of the Pacific Northwest of the United States and southern coast of Brazil. Nestled in the once massive Atlantic Rain Forest, a woodland that used to run the length of the Brazilian coast. Today 5-7% of this great jungle, older than the Amazon, is still intact. Despite its reduced size and its listing as the second most endangered rain forest in the world, (after Madagascar's) the Brazilian Mata Atlantica can boast more indigenous tree species per hectare than any other forest in the world.

This is where I write, paint and teach yoga.