Stefania Fernanda Leão

Stefania Fernanda Leão is a Brazilian writer, creative, and woman of quiet faith whose debut devotional, The Prayer: Rise with Jesus, has quietly become one of the most beloved morning prayer books of the year — a #1 Amazon Best Seller in English, Portuguese, and Italian, and a three-time international book award winner. Born and raised in Brazil, Stefania carries a uniquely Brazilian warmth into every page she writes: sun-soaked, deeply rooted in scripture, and unafraid of the dark parts of the human story.

The Prayer was born in one of the darkest seasons of Stefania's life. She was not yet a published author — she was a young woman trying to find her way back to the light, writing one morning prayer at a time for herself. What she discovered, page by page, was that the discipline of meeting God in the morning was the very thread that pulled her out of the dark. By the time she had thirty prayers, she had also been quietly rebuilt. She made the book she wished she'd had during her hardest year, and trusted that other women — mothers, daughters, sisters, the worn-out and the wide-eyed — might need the same companion.

Her work lives at the intersection of spirituality, beauty, and the everyday. Through Stefania Hub, the digital community she founded at stefanialeao.com, she gathers women and Christian readers around writing, art direction, and slow, faith-rooted living. Her readership spans English-speaking audiences in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, as well as a deeply loyal Portuguese-speaking community across Brazil and Portugal — where Oração: Erga-se com Jesus reached #1 in Religion on Amazon and remains a perennial bestseller.

In 2025, The Prayer: Rise with Jesus was named winner of the Best Indie Book Award for Christian Prayer & Meditation, the Storytrade Award for Christian Devotional, and the Readers' Favorite Book Award for Devotion & Study — three international honors in a single calendar year. Stefania has been called one of the defining new voices in illustrated Christian devotional writing, and she shares her writing process, daily prayers, and quiet faith reflections with a growing community on TikTok (@stefanialeao) and Instagram (@stefanialeaoofficial). Stefania is the primary author and original creator of The Prayer, having written the manuscript from her own story of faith, with Alexander Debelov joining as co-author and illustrator to help shape and publish the finished book.

Today, Stefania writes from her home in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she continues to grow Stefania Hub and the global community around The Prayer. She speaks publicly about her writing journey, her faith, and the slow craft of devotional work — and her readers, mothers, daughters, sisters and friends, return each morning to the practice she once built only for herself. What began as a private rescue has become a shared morning, lived by tens of thousands of women around the world.