Master Class: Crooked Grace: Fernando Pessoa & Portuguese Literature with Katherine Vaz
Master Class: Crooked Grace: Fernando Pessoa & Portuguese Literature with Katherine Vaz
2 Sessions: Saturday + Sunday, July 19 + 20
2:00-3:30pm ET
Katherine Vaz
Vaz is the only Portuguese American with work recorded by the Library of Congress (Hispanic Division) when her novel Saudade appeared. She represented the U.S. on the Presidential Delegation for the World's Fair/Expo98 in Lisbon. Her work centers on the Luso experience in the U.S., and her latest novel, Above the Salt, about Madeiran refugees in Illinois, was a People Magazine Book of the Week, a Top 15 from Good Morning, America, and Goodreads Top Pick. Her novel Mariana, in script development for Harrison Productions, sold in six languages and was a Top Thirty International Book of 1998; her collection Fado and Other Stories won the Drue Heinz LIterature Prize, and Our Lady of the Artichokes won the Prairie Schooner Award. She was named one of the Top 100 Most Influential Portuguese Americans of All Time and has taught at Harvard, the University of California at Davis, Baruch College, and other places.
Curious about Portugal’s exploding popularity? Planning your first trip? Join me for a celebration of some of the most exciting Portuguese authors, starting with close readings of FERNANDO PESSOA, one of the world’s greatest modernist poets. We’ll continue the trail with ANTONIO TABUCCHI’s Requiem, a novella that depicts a narrator pursuing a Pessoa-like figure through fascist Lisbon…a fun, offbeat city walk that writers can replicate.
We’ll share how this small nation created immortal, global literature in defiance of authoritarianism with a few pages from Nobel laureate JOSÉ SARAMAGO, ANTÓNIO LOBO ANTUNES, LÍDIA JORGE, and MARIA TERESA HORTA, who narrowly escaped prison and will inspire you with how one voice defied censorship.
We’ll conclude with vibrant new voices on the scene that move away from the past and look at poverty, displacement, and other modern issues: GONÇALO TAVARES, SUSANA MOREIRA MARQUES, JOEL NETO, and JOÃO DE MELO. We’ll enjoy fado music and play a Pessoa Heteronym Game. Read nothing, a little, a lot, or all of it; we’ll combine lecture and discussion. Those who know nothing about Portugal are especially welcome! Buy Requiem on your own, (or just listen to my description of it in class), and there’ll be a packet of excerpts. BONUS HANDOUT: A Writer’s Special Guide to Lisbon (including a pinpointing of Saramago’s favorite table at his favorite restaurant and details about a Pessoa Escape the Room game).
Workshop Highlights:
Part-lecture, part-discussion; just drop in if you're curious, or read everything!
Feeling defeated as an artist by the state of the world? I guarantee these authors will exhilarate you.
Go to Lisbon with a special writer's-eye-view of the city. Perfect if you know NOTHING about these authors and have never heard of Pessoa. If you've heard of him or the others, you'll get to expand your appreciation.
Katherine Vaz is the author of three novels, Saudade (St. Martin’s, 1994), a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, Mariana, published in six languages and picked by the Library of Congress as one of the Top Thirty International Books of 1998, and Above the Salt, to be published in 2023 by Flatiron Books/Macmillan.
Her collection Fado & Other Stories (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997) won a Drue Heinz Literature Prize and Our Lady of the Artichokes (Bison Books, 2008) won a Prairie Schooner Award. Her most recent short story collection is The Love Life of an Assistant Animator & Other Stories was published by Tailwinds Press in 2017. The Heart is a Drowning Object, a collaboration with artist Isabel Pavão was released as an e-book with Artists Proof Editions.
Her children’s stories have appeared in anthologies by Viking, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster, and her short fiction has appeared in many magazines. She won a New York Film Academy and Writer’s Store national contest for a screenplay idea based on one of her stories.
She has been a Briggs-Copeland Fellow in Fiction at Harvard University and Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is the first Portuguese-American to have her work recorded by the Library of Congress (Hispanic Division) and teaches “Writing the Luso Experience” each summer in the Disquiet International Literary Conference in Lisboa, Portugal. Other honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a citation as a Portuguese-American Woman of the Year, an appointment to the six-person Presidential Delegation (Clinton) to the World’s Fair/Expo 98 in Lisboa, and a 2022 citation by the Portuguese-American Leadership Council of the U.S. as one of the all-time most influential women of Lusa heritage.
Asked in an interview about the best advice she received as a young writer, Vaz replied: “In my case, it was somebody saying, “Why don’t you tell me some of the things that are yours?” I think that looking for what you have inside you is the place to begin. But then, just studying stories for what they can teach you about what you can do with your own material, because you have to be an original. You cannot write like anyone else. By definition, original means that it has to come from you. So, you learn with the part of your brain that’s always trying to learn more, the way a musician has to be an original, but I’ve never met a musician who didn’t study music, what’s being done in the field. Mostly, it’s trying to say, “What’s my voice, and how do I create it?”
She lives in New York City with her husband, Christopher Cerf, an Emmy- and Grammy-winning TV producer, composer for Sesame Street, editor, and author.
