Bernardo was born in 1960 in Rio de Janeiro. He is a writer, journalist, playwright and translator. He is the author of a book of short stories Aberration (1993), two theater pieces and eleven novels, among them Nine Nights (Machado de Assis Prize, Portugal Telecom Prize), Reproduction (Jabuti Award) and the recent Sympathy for the Devil, 2016.

Published in Brazil by Companhia das Letras, his books have been translated into more than ten languages. His piece Say what you don’t think in languages that you don’t speak, written for the experimental group Teatro da Vertigem (Vertigo Theater) and published in France (ed. Les Solitaires Intempestifs), premiered at the old Brussels Stock Exchange building in 2014 before being presented at the official selection of the Avignon Festival the same year.

Bernardo often contributes articles, essays and stories in publications from various countries. Some of his narratives, critiques and short fictions published in Folha de S. Paulo were collected in the volume O Mundo Fora dos Eixos (The World off the Rails) (Publifolha, 2006).

He is currently a columnist for Folha de S. Paulo, a newspaper for which he also worked as a correspondent in Paris and New York. Bernardo Carvalho is represented by the literary agency Rogers, Coleridge and White.