In English

ABOUT RAPHAEL DRACCON

It started at age six. I watched Enter the Dragon and made a promise: I would be everything Bruce Lee was. A writer. A black belt. A filmmaker. I kept all three.

I was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in a neighborhood surrounded by favelas, where violence was a constant. I once took a knife strike protecting my best friend. During Carnival. In the early hours of the morning. No doctors in the ER. Definitely not fun. Some of the people I grew up with became criminals. I became a writer. Today I am a Brazilian-American, living in Los Angeles with my wife and creative partner, Carolina Munhóz.

My life has been shaped by the same dreams that form New Ether, the world of my main literary saga Dragons of Ether, and they have taken me to places that once felt equally out of reach. Some of them:

I’ve published 13 novels with over one million copies sold across Brazil, Mexico, and Portugal. My Dragons of Ether trilogy spent five consecutive years at #1 on Brazil’s largest book marketplace. Folha de São Paulo put me on the front page. The Guardian called my work “a rare jewel that makes us believe in the power of dreaming.” Paulo Coelho named me at the Frankfurt Book Fair as a writer who should represent Brazil to the world. My favorite Brazilian artist, the rapper Emicida, cited me in one of his songs.

I was also the person who fought to bring Game of Thrones to Brazil, back when nobody wanted the book. I pushed for its publication at Leya Brasil before anyone knew what it would become. When HBO made the series and sales exploded, Leya gave me my own editorial imprint. For years I was also a fantasy book editor, until I moved to Rocco, the Brazilian home of Harry Potter, Eragon, and The Hunger Games,  in what became the largest author deal in Rocco’s history at the time.

As a screenwriter, I was part of Globo’s first-ever American-style writers room on Supermax. I then created and showran two Netflix Original series: The Chosen One and Invisible City, which ranked in the Top 10 in 60 countries and became Netflix’s #1 Brazilian Original series. I’ve developed projects with WarnerMedia, HBO Max, DC Comics, Marvel, Miramax, and Starz. I’m represented by Gersh Agency. I was also invited as a featured celebrity to the Fortnite World Championship at The Forum in Los Angeles.

And then there was the day I sat across from Shannon Lee and told her what her father meant to me. I had been a finalist to create an official Bruce Lee anime for the Bruce Lee Institute. I didn’t win. But I got that meeting. And I got to tell Shannon, face to face, what Bruce Lee meant to a six-year-old boy in Rio de Janeiro who made a promise he intended to keep.

He still does.

Raphael Draccon, 32 years old, is a novelist and
screenwriter awarded by the American Screenwriter
Association. He is considered one of the ten most
influential and bestselling writers of the current literary
market in Brazil. Aside from having already signed
with two of the largest publishers in the country,
Draccon now is an editor and has his own imprint at
Leya called Fantasy – Casa da Palavra.
He wrote the bestselling trilogy Dragons of Ether in
which he retells fairy tales in a more “pop” version. He
published the dark fantasy book Espíritos de Gelo
(Spirits of Ice) in Brazil and Portugal (at Gailivro –
Dom Quixote publisher) and launched the successful
Fios de Prata – Reconstruindo Sandman (Silver Cords
- Rebuilding Sandman).
The author recommended George R. R. Martin to his
publisher before the HBO serie and today writes the
column Cavernas e Dragões (Caves and Dragons) in
the blog Sedentário e Hiperativo (Sedentary and
Hiperactive – nominated for a VMA). In 2012 went on
tour with the American writer Alyson Noël in Brazil
and in 2013 got the 4
th
place in the best-