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Your job is gone, your engagement is off, and your severance package will end soon. What else can you do? Start packing.

Don't forget to bring a beach read!

Link to article in the NYT Travel Section
The 44 Places to Go in 2009
Destination Number 24: Florianopolis, Brazil

Welcome to Floripa

Julias of the world unite! Check out the NYT-featured blog, Dating a Banker Anonymous.

DABA Girls Dish the Dirt on Wall Street Men

Becoming Brazilian

A novel by Jennifer Prado
Copyright 2009 All rights reserved
wc: 74,000

When stressed-out, twenty-six-year-old Julia Cordeiro watches her job on Wall Street implode on the same day she gets dumped by her fiancé, she makes a spontaneous decision to escape to a sleepy fishing village one hour from Florianopolis in southern Brazil before she also loses her mind.

The relaxed atmosphere of Santa Marta is completely contrary to the intensity of New York City, and Julia blissfully doesn't know a soul in the rugged coastal town -- it's exactly the kind of place she needs in order to reinvent herself. But Julia doesn't quite know who she wants to be.

Through a series of romantic foibles and cultural mishaps in her adopted home, Julia learns the hard way how to finally differentiate between love and lust, relationships and one-night stands. Along the way, she meets an array of unusual characters who become her unlikely friends: a young boy with a presidential name, an older Chilean man, a disgruntled office worker from London, an attractive Brazilian innkeeper, a Finnish traveler with rock-star magnetism, a local transsexual and expert in feminine charm, and a too-young-to-be-any-good-for-her surfer. Each new encounter challenges Julia's ideals, exposes her weaknesses, and forces her to question her values. Quite possibly, Santa Marta will be the one place where Julia finally gets it right.

Samples of Published Fiction:

The Banker and the Buddhist
Nominated for the 2006 StorySouth Million Writers Award, which honors the best online fiction of the year.

Purchase, "Latina in Wonderland" on Amazon - YA Magical Realism Fable
Latina

Join the Latina Blog

Latina in Wonderland in January 2009 NuncaSola Newsletter
NuncaSola

Print Publications:

Nuvein - Cultural Anthology

Essay in a David Barringer Anthology - Paperback - RELEASED DECEMBER 2008!
What Happened to Us These Last Couple Years?-Publisher: So New Publishing, Eugene, OR

Forthcoming 2009: Essay in Volume 9 - Edited by Marlow Peerse Weaver In Our Own Words - A Generation Defining Itself

Forthcoming 2009: Contributor for Time Out New York's - City Guide: Sao Paulo, Brazil
Travel Guide

Featured Author on Good Reads

My Blog, Emerge - New Authors - This week: My short story, Nada, is published by Acentos Review

My short stories and essays have appeared in the following on-line literary magazines:
Tower of Babel
Nuvein Magazine
The Scream On Line
Root Magazine
Mad Hatters' Review
Small Spiral Notebook
The Dead Mule
Insolent Rudder
SN Review
Pindeldyboz
Muse Apprentice Guild
Word Riot
Fiction Funhouse (RIP)
Web del Sol

Author’s Biography:

Jennifer Prado was raised in Princeton, NJ by professorial parents who dragged her, headphones-and-all, to Walden Pond as a preteen and tried to instill Thoreau’s mantra of Simplify, Simplify in her mall-addled mind. Jennifer completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and majored in Fiction and Latin American Studies, with a Junior Year at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. In New York City, she studied screen writing at Film and Video Arts. Only after completing an MBA and a roller-coaster career in International Finance, did she have the good sense (or temporary insanity) to take a writing sabbatical and begin an early draft of this novel, as well as a Young Adult magical realism fable, and numerous short stories and essays.

Jennifer Prado’s work has been published in fourteen web-based magazines, three print anthologies and her YA novel, Latina in Wonderland, can be found on Amazon. She is also the Producer of a popular blog of interviews called, Emerge - New Authors. To support her writing habit, Jennifer currently works as a Marketing Strategist in New York City and Latin America and does much of her writing on a notebook in airport lounges, while drinking bad coffee in disposable cups.

Becoming Brazilian - A Novel

Five-Second Pitch:

A romantic comedy set to a soundtrack by Falamansa.

Falamansa on YouTube

Light entertainment for dark times.

An armchair travel adventure for readers too broke to vacation.