The Zika virus epidemic of 2015–2016 spread rapidly through the Americas, transmitted primarily by the Aedes aegypti mosquito — the same species responsible for yellow fever and dengue. Zika caused an epidemic of microcephaly in newborns in Brazil, triggering a global health emergency declared by the World Health Organization in February 2016. The epidemic drew international attention to the ongoing threat posed by mosquito-borne viral diseases in an era of climate change and globalisation.

The Zika epidemic prompted immediate creative responses from writers in Brazil and Latin America for whom the mosquito had always been a lived reality rather than a historical curiosity. Brazilian poets and writers engaged with the epidemic's intersection of bodily vulnerability, poverty (Zika spread fastest in areas with poor sanitation and limited ability to control mosquitoes), and maternal fear in ways that updated the tradition of epidemic literature for the twenty-first century. The Zika crisis also stimulated new ecological poetry about the consequences of environmental disruption for vector-borne disease.