Inês Botelho was born on 3rd August 1986 in Vila Nova de Gaia. She started studying music early on, having completed the 8th grade of Piano and Musical Education at the Academia de Música de Vilar do Paraíso.
During the 2002 summer holidays she wrote what would later become Daughter of the Worlds, the first tome of the fantasy trilogy The Sceptre of Aerzis. Lady of Night and Mists and Queen of the Lands of Light followed, respectively in 2003 and 2004. Edições Gailivro published all books a year after they were written and, between 2012 and 2013, 11×17 republished them as paperbacks.
Prelude came out in 2007 as an imprint of Edições Gailivro. In early 2010 Porto Editora published The past we shall become. Several of Inês Botelho’s stories have appeared in magazines and short story collections; the Imperfect Tales collection has been translated to Italian. Inês Botelho also pens the “There be trails” column for Revista Bang!.
Holding a degree in Biology from the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto, in 2013 she received a Master of Anglo-American Studies from the Faculty of Arts of the same institution, having written her dissertation on representations of “Beauty and the Beast” in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber. During these years she also took part in two Erasmus programs, first in Milan, then in Prague.
Since 2014 she is a collaborator of CETAPS – Centre for English Translation and Anglo-Portuguese Studies. Her main research focus on utopian studies as well as folk and fairy tales and their use in literature, cinema, photography, and dance, while her other areas of interest include feminism, modernism, postmodernism, intertextuality, fantasy, and science fiction. She has published articles and attended conferences with papers on these subjects.
She frequently participates in several literary festivals and events.