Rafael Lemos is a PhD candidate at Yale University, writing a dissertation on language, national ideology, and racial consciousness in the ethnographic writings of Zora Neale Hurston and Mário de Andrade. His research focuses on the Black Atlantic, politics, and socio-cultural interactions between Africa and the African diaspora in the Americas. He holds M.A. degrees in Spanish and Portuguese (Yale University), Music (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro – UFRJ, Brazil), and Visual Arts (São Paulo State University – Unesp, Brazil), as well as a specialization in Public Policy for Latin America and the Caribbean (FLACSO). His poems and translations have appeared in Variantes Magazine and JoLT (Yale University), revista bufo (Brazil), Plástico Bolha (Brazil), and virada, vol. 3, among others. His first poetry book, "Um dia se faz entre dentes", was published by Editora Urutau in Brazil in 2024.