Maria Rosa Parreiro Colaço was born in Torrão in the municipality of Alcácer do Sal in the Setúbal District of Portugal on 19 September 1935.
Four years after Mozambique's independence she returned to Portugal to teach and lived in Almada, on the left bank of the River Tagus, to the south of the Portuguese capital of Lisbon.
[1][2][3] Promoting the importance of reading in the development and education of children, Colaço was particularly identified with her book A Criança e a Vida (Child and Life), a collection of stories written by her primary school students in Mozambique, which was published in 1960 and has been translated into several other languages, and as a journalist, having a weekly column of chronicles about everyday life in the Lisbon-based newspaper, A Capital, as well as writing for several other newspapers including Diário de Notícias.
She also prepared several texts for exhibition catalogues by artists and by the photographer Eduardo Gageiro, with whom she collaborated on Estas Crianças Aqui (These children here) in 1988.
The annual Maria Rosa Colaço Literary Prize celebrates her work and she has also given her name to several roads in Portugal[2] and to the public library in Torrão.