Katherine Vaz

Katherine Vaz
photo by Christopher Cerf
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	United States
Genre	Novels, short stories, non-fiction, children’s literature

Katherine Vaz (born August 26, 1955) is an American author who has published two novels, two story collections, and children’s stories. A former Briggs-Copeland Fellow in Fiction at Harvard University and a 2006-7 Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, she lives and works in New York City.

Memberships

PEN/America, Authors Guild, Luso-American Education Foundation, PALCUS (Portuguese-American Leadership Conference of the U.S.), the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and the International Society for the Study of the Short Story in English.

Lectures/Public Service

October, 1996: “Magic and Obsession in Portuguese Literature,” PALCUS Conference, (Portuguese-American Leadership Conference/U.S.), UMass/Dartmouth.

March 7, 1997: “Saudade,” at the Luso-American Education Foundation Conference, University of California at Berkeley.

April 4, 1997: part of Luso-American contingent invited by Vice President Al Gore to welcome Prime Minister Antonio Guterrez of Portugal to the U.S.

May 2-4, 1997: “Azorean Stories: Reading History’s Silent Passages,” at Sixth Annual Symposium on Atlantic Heritages, Tulare, California.

October 20, 1997: “The Real and Imaginary Coalesce into Fiction: Songs of Fate in Portuguese Stories,” at the Library of Congress at the invitation of the Hispanic Division of the Library and the Portuguese Embassy.

October 20, 1997: interview taped for the Luso-Hispanic archives. First Portuguese-American to be honored with a recording. Past participants include Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Gabriela Mistral, Jorge Amado, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda.

October 21, 1997: “Magic, Spirits, and Silence in Luso-American Fiction,” Georgetown University.

April 2, 1998: Speaker for Rutgers/Phi Beta Kappa at First International Conference on the Literature of Portugal. First speaker for Daniel A. & Elvira Rodrigues Lecture Series, Rutgers University.

June 12-13, 1998: member of six-person U.S. Presidential Delegation sent to Expo 98/World’s Fair, Lisbon.

July, 2002: International Conference on the Short Story, New Orleans. October, 2003: Guest speaker, Yale University, Council on Latin American Studies.

April, 2004: Ran a Colloquium on Transnational Fiction at Princeton University.

March 2004: Associated Writing Programs Convention, Chicago: Panel on “Structuring Your Story Collection.” NPR radio segment on Mariana. Guest writer/University of Illinois at Urbana.

October, 2004: International Conference on the Short Story, Madrid, Spain. (American, Spanish, Portuguese authors).

June, 2006: International Conference on the Short Story, Lisbon, Portugal. (Gave Welcoming Address at American Embassy + reading).

March, 2007: The Library of Congress/Hispanic Division: Below the Salt: A Novel in Progress.

April, 2007: Below the Salt: A Novel in Progress: Presentation at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

September 22, 2007: Escrita da Vida: Luso-American Fiction, a reading and conversation at the J.F.K. Library in Boston.

April 15-17, 2008: Notre Dame University, guest writer and reader with Alice McDermott

Published works

Novels

• Saudade (St. Martin’s Press, June 1994)
• Mariana (HarperCollins/Flamingo, 1997)

Story collections

• Fado & Other Stories (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997)
• Lady of the Artichokes and Other Portuguese-American Stories (University of Nebraska Press, 2008);

Short stories

• "I Can’t Keep Anything Nice in This House" (Descant, Fort Worth, TX, Fall/Winter 1986)
• "What I Did on My Christmas Vacation" (Proof Rock, Halifax, VA, Winter 1988)
• "Original Sin" (Black Ice, Belmont, MA, 1988)
• "A Little Irish Water Music" (The Sun, March 1988)
• "Sostenuto" (Kalliope, Jacksonville, FL, February 1988)
• "Fado" (TriQuarterly, Fall 1989)
• "Cartooning is Dead" (Primavera, Ann Arbor, MI, 1989)
• "Add Blue to Make White Whiter" (Other Voices, Summer/Fall 1990)
• "Red Tide" (Webster Review, Webster Groves, MO, Spring 1991)
• "Still Life" (The American Voice, Louisville, KY, 1993)
• "Scalings" (The Gettysburg Review, Spring 1995)
• "The Birth of Water Stories" (Speak, San Francisco, CA, October 1996)
• "Island Fever" (Nimrod, Tulsa, OK, Fall/Winter 1996)
• "The Lost Love Letter of a Nun" (Madame Class Magazine, Milan, Italy, August 1997)
• "Michigan Girl" (The Iowa Review, December 2000)
• "Utter" (The Malahat Review, Fall 2000)
• "The Man Who Was Made of Netting" (Tin House, January 2001)
• "My Family, Posing for Rodin" (The Antioch Review, Summer 2001)
• "Taking a Stitch in a Dead Man’s Arm" (BOMB, Winter 2001)

• "Blue Flamingo Looks At Red Water" (The Sun May, 2002)
• "The Glass-Eaters" (Glimmer Train, Fall 2002)
• "Bébé Marie Springs from the Box" (ACM (Another Chicago Magazine), Fall 2002)
• "Annette Kellermann Is My Hero" (The Alaska Quarterly Review, Spring 2003)
• "Pavane for a Dead Princess" (Kalliope, Spring 2003)
• "the rice artist" (The Iowa Review, August 2003)
• "Burning Sailor Boy" (Provincetown Arts, Summer 2003)
• "Our Lady of the Artichokes" (Pleiades, Fall 2003)
• "The Love Life of an Assistant Animator" (Glimmer Train, Fall 2003)
• "A Simple Affair" (Gargoyle Magazine, May 2004)
• "The Knife Longs for the Ruby" (Ninth Letter, Spring 2004)
• "Our Bones Here Are Waiting for Yours" (Five Points, 2004)
• "East Bay Grease" (The Antioch Review, Summer 2004)
• "One Must Speak of Sex in French" (Confrontation, Fall 2004/Winter 2005)
• "All Riptides Roar with Sand from Opposing Shores" (Notre Dame Review, Winter 2006)
• "Lisbon Story" (Harvard Review, Spring 2006)

Non-fiction

• “Songs of the Soul, Songs of the Night,” The New York Times, Sophisticated Traveler Magazine, September 18, 1994
• Signatures of Grace (Dutton, 2000). Essay on Baptism. (In conjunction with Mary Gordon, Andre Dubus, Patricia Hampl, Ron Hansen, Paula Huston, Paul Mariani).
• “Carving the Fruitstones,” for anthology about short fiction, 2004, Greenwood Publications.
• “This Howling,” essay on the Azores/introduction to novel by João de Melo (My World Is Not of This Kingdom, translated from Portuguese by Gregory Rabassa), Aliform Press, 2003.

Children's literature

• “The Kingdom of Melting Glances” short story in A Wolf at the Door (Simon & Schuster, 2000, in fourth printing)
• “A World Painted by Birds” in Green Man anthology (Viking, 2002)
• “My Swan Sister,” title story in Swan Sister and Other Stories (Simon & Schuster, 2003)
• “Your Garnet Eyes,”in anthology Faery Reel, (Viking, 2004)
• “Chamber Music for Animals,” in Coyote Road anthology (Viking, 2006)

Awards

• 1993: National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship
• 1997: Drue Heinz Literature Prize, Fado & Other Stories
• 2000: Leadership Award/Portuguese-American Leadership Council of the U.S.
• 2002: Portuguese-American Women’s Association Woman of the Year Award
• 2007: Prairie Schooner Book Prize, Lady of the Artichokes and Other Portuguese-American Stories

External links

• Katherine Vaz: The Department of English and American Literature and Language
• Katherine Vaz's Web site
• Katherine Vaz on Internet Book List
• Works by Katherine Vaz at Open Library