Early years Hilda de Almeida Prado Hilst was the only daughter of Apolônio de Almeida Prado Hilst and Bedecilda Vaz Cardoso. Her father owned a coffee plantation and also worked as a journalist, poet, and essayist. He was affected by
schizophrenia throughout his life. Her mother came from a conservative Portuguese immigrant family. The conditions of her parents' mental health (and the relationships they had with mental health) greatly influenced Hilst's writing, and her books describe several experiences she had with her father. Her parents separated in 1932 while she was still an infant, and three years later her father received the diagnosis of schizophrenia and thereafter spent much of his life in mental institutions. Hilst grew up in
Jaú, a town in the state of São Paulo, with her mother and half brother from her mother's previous marriage. Hilst attended elementary and high school at Collegia Santa Marcelina in São Paulo before enrolling in a bachelor's degree program at
Mackenzie Presbyterian University. Before Hilst started college, her mother told her of her father's condition, and Hilst went to visit him in a mental institution for the first time. After graduating from Mackenzie, Hilst began studying for her second degree at the
law school at the
University of São Paulo,
Early career Hilst published her first book of poetry in 1950,
Omen (), which received great acclaim from her contemporaries like
Jorge de Lima and
Cecília Meireles. It was not long before she published her second book,
Ballad of Alzira () in 1951. That same year Hilst took over guardianship of her father. Later in 1957, Hilst began her seven-month tour of Europe, traveling through France, Italy and Greece. Upon her return to São Paulo, she settled in the
Sumaré neighborhood, and was frequently in the company of other artists, such as
Gilka Machado and
Bráulio Pedroso. She ordered the construction of a new house on the same property, nicknamed the House of the Sun (), which she personally designed to be an artistic space for inspiration and creativity. When it was completed in 1966, she moved into the house with sculptor Dante Casarini, with whom she had a prior relationship.
Theater and prose At the House of the Sun, Hilst was particularly prolific as she started writing her first theater works, completing nine plays and one poetry compilation between 1967 and 1969. Hilst lived somewhat secluded in Campinas for the rest of her life, accompanied by other artists. The House of the Sun became a hub for artists and writers, who were invited to spend time there and enjoy the creative atmosphere. Two prominent artists to do so were
Bruno Tolentino and
Caio Fernando Abreu. During her time at the House of the Sun, Hilst also engaged in her own experiments with
electronic voice phenomena, an electronic recording method that supposedly interprets the voices of the dead. In 1969, she built a second home, the . Her theater writings finished in the same year, with her turning instead to prose fiction with her experimental text a year later.
Later years In the 1980s, due to increasing financial pressure from a lack of book sales, Hilst participated in the (Artist-in-Residence program), at the
Universidade Estadual de Campinas, being the first artist to do so. The program was conceived as a way for students to meet established authors. She later held other teaching positions at the university. Hilst published ''Lori Lamby's Pink Notebook'' () in 1990, the first book of a pornographic
tetralogy. She announced her "goodbye to serious literature" in the 1990s because she was "irritated by the meager reaching of her writing". A number of Hilst's books were originally published by smaller Brazilian publishers, but beginning in 2001,
Editora Globo, the publishing branch of the Brazilian media organization
Globo, began reissuing nearly all her works, as part of its . She stopped writing in the same year, telling an interviewer that she had said everything she wanted to say.
Death Hilst died on 4 February 2004, in Campinas at the age of 73. She had been hospitalized at the
Hospital das Clínicas da Unicamp since 2 January, following surgery for a fractured
femur. Her health sharply declined after contracting an infection, aggravated by a chronic heart and pulmonary condition, before she eventually died due to multiple organ failure. Following her death, Hilst's friend Mora Fuentes created the Hilda Hilst Institute in her honor, an organization whose mission is to uphold the House of the Sun as a space for artistic creation and serves as a library and cultural center. Author Yuri Vieira, who lived in the House of the Sun for two years, wrote a book about his experiences there. After her death, Hilst garnered more fame among English language readership as several of her novels were translated to the language, such as
With My Dog Eyes,
The Obscene Madame D., and
Letters from a Seducer. ==Themes==