Anna Camara was born in the Portuguese Açores and grew up in Toronto’s Beaches neighbourhood. She attended Niagara Theatre School and then co-founded Opus Theatre in Hamilton, Ontario. She worked as a performance artist, costume designer and scenic artist in regional theatres and returned to Toronto in the late 1970s to find a “real” job.

In 1981, Anna became creative director of George Kouri Associates, a Toronto communications firm, and helped to grow the company ten-fold. She left to start her own multimedia business in 1987.

While freelancing and volunteering in her school community, Anna began to write fiction. Her work has since received awards and grants and has been published in small press and literary magazines. In 1999 Anna was delighted to participate as a writer in Tapestry New Opera Works’ Composer-Librettist Laboratory. In April 2000 she became Tapestry’s communications and outreach director and later that year was invited to read from her fiction at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre. Her long essay on Portuguese culture in Toronto was featured in the summer 2000 issue of Fuse Magazine. Anna maintains a hands-on interest in the arts – literary, performance and visual. In May 2002 she was guest curator of a group exhibition at Cambridge Galleries for which she wrote a controversial essay – Sem Saudade (Without Regret) received 3,000 visitors and was successfully re-mounted in Toronto as a national exhibition in October 2003. She has recently translated English lyrics into Portuguese for a new opera inspired by Portuguese fado.

In 2008, Anna completed the post-graduate Corporate Communications and Public Relations program at Centennial College’s Centre for Creative Communications. There, she updated her knowledge of current business practices and delved deeply into online communications.

Anna continues work on her book of fiction, Mid-Atlantic Ridge – a collection of related stories about the island where she was born and immigrant life in Toronto during the 1950s and ‘60s. She brings this broad perspective to her communications practice.

Anna Camara can be reached at:

anna.camara1@gmail.com

balen@sympatico.ca

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