Paulo Coelho (edit name/settings)

The Brazilian author Paulo Coelho was born in 1947 in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Before dedicating his life completely to literature, he worked as theatre director and actor, lyricist and journalist.

In 1986, Coelho did the pilgrimage to Saint James of Compostella, an experience later to be documented in his book The Pilgrimage. The following year, he published The Alchemist. Slow initial sales convinced his first publisher to drop the novel, but it went on to become one of the bestselling and best-loved Brazilian books of all time.

Other titles to his credit include Brida (1990), The Valkyries (1992), By The River Piedra I Sat Down And Wept (1994), the collection of his best columns published in the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo entitled Maktub (1994), the compilation of texts titled Phrases (1995), The Fifth Mountain (1996), Manual Of A Warrior of Light (1997), Veronika Decides To Die (1998), The Devil and Miss Prym (2000), the compilation of traditional tales in Stories For Parents, Children and Grandchildren (2001), Eleven Minutes (2003), and The Zahir (2005).

Coelho wrote song lyrics for many famous performers in Brazilian music too, such as Elis Regina and Rita Lee. During the months of March, April, May and June 2006, Paulo Coelho traveled to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his pilgrimage to Saint James of Compostella in 1986. He also held surprise book signings - announced one day in advance - in some cities along the way to have a chance to meet his readers. During his ninety days of pilgrimage, the author traveled around the globe and took the famous Transiberrian train that took him to Vladivostok. During this experience Paulo Coelho launched his blog Walking the Path - The Pilgrimage in order to share with his readers his impressions. Since this first blog, Paulo Coelho has expanded his presence in the Internet with his daily blogs in Wordpress http://paulocoelhoblog.com, Myspace http://www.myspace.com/paulocoelho, Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/Paulo-Coelho/11777366210 and also Twitter http://www.twitter.com/paulocoelho

He is equally present in media sharing sites such as Youtube http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=paulabraconnot and Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulo_coelho/sets offering on a regular basis not only texts but also videos and pictures to his readers.

From this intensive interest and use of the Internet sprang his bold new project: The Experimental Witch http://paulocoelhoblog.com/experimental-witch where he invites his readers to adapt to the screen his book The Witch of Portobello. You can still subscribe in this experiment!

Indeed Paulo Coelho is a firm believer of the Internet as a new media and is the first bestselling author to actively support online free distribution http://piratecoelho.wordpress.com of his work.

Paulo Coelho's Experimental Witch Film Competition Trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeFLCQY6ysc&feature