Faculty & Guests*
GuestsJohn Frey Portuguese GuestsJosé Eduardo Agualusa |
FacultyKim Addonizio |
*All of the above faculty have confirmed their attendance at the 2011 program, however cancellations sometimes happen. In the event of a cancellation, the ILP will notify all participants and find the best possible replacement.
Kim Addonizio is the author of five collections of poetry including Tell Me, a 2000 National Book Award Finalist. Her work has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, two NEA Fellowships, the John Ciardi Lifetime Achievement Award, and other honors. Addonizio's other books include two novels, Little Beauties and My Dreams Out in the Street; and a book of stories, In the Box Called Pleasure. With Cheryl Dumesnil, she co-edited Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos.
José Eduardo Agualusa (Alves da Cunha) was born in 1960 in Huambo, Angola, and spends most of his time in Portugal, Angola and Brazil working as a writer and journalist. His books have been translated into more than 20 languages. His books Creole, The Book of Chameleons, My Father’s Wives, and Rainy Season have been translated into English. He has also written three plays, “W Generation,” “Chovem Amores na Rua do Matador” (with Mia Couto), and “O Monólogo.” Agualusa is the recipient of grants and residencies from the Centro Nacional da Cultura, the Fundação do Oriente, the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, the Dutch Foundation for Litterature, and the Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature. In 2006 he established the Brazilian publisher Língua Geral, which focuses on Portuguese-language books.
Bruno de Almeida was born in Paris in March 1965 of Portuguese origins and has
lived between New York City and Lisbon since 1985. In 1993 his first film "The Debt"
won the award for best short at the Cannes Film Festival Critic's Week, and his feature
debut "On the Run," starring Michael Imperioli, John Ventimiglia (from The Sopranos) won, in 1999, the award for best film at the Ourense Film Festival in Spain. His second feature, the documentary "The Art of Amalia," was shown in theatres all over the US and Europe and went double platinum as the top-selling DVD in Portugal for four consecutive weeks. Other films include "O Candidato Vieira," "Other Projects," "The
Collection," and "6=0 Homostetica." Bruno is currently in development on "Operation
Autumn," a political thriller about the 1965 tragic killing of General Humberto Delgado by the Portuguese fascist police.
Writer, literary critic and translator, Fernando Pinto do Amaral was born in 1960 in Lisbon. He studied Medicine but graduated in Literary Studies (1986), completing his PhD in Portuguese Literature (1998). He is currently a professor at the University of Lisbon, where has taught since 1987. He has published six poetry books, two essay collections, a volume of short-stories, a novel, and two books for children. He translated Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, Verlaine’s Poèmes Saturniens and the whole poetical work of Jorge Luis Borges. He was awarded several literary prizes, and he is currently in charge of the National Reading Plan for the Ministry of Education.
António Lobo Antunes was born in Lisbon. At the age of seven he decided to be a writer, but when he was 16, his father sent him to medical school. He never stopped writing, but at the end of his education he had to join the Portuguese Army and work as an army doctor in the war in Angola. He returned from Africa in 1973, and the Angolan war for independence later became the subject of many of his novels. Following a divorce, he published his first novel in 1979, Memória de Elefante (Elephant's Memory), in which he tells the story of his separation. After the success of his early novels, he decided to practice medicine part-time and devote his evenings to writing. Antunes is the prizewinning author of the novels South of Nowhere, The Return of the Caravels, Act of the Damned, An Explanation of the Birds, The Natural Order of Things, Fado Alexandrino, and What Can I Do When Everything’s on Fire, among many other works. The New York Times has called him “one of Portugal’s pre-eminent writers.” He practices psychiatry at the outpatient unit of the Hospital Miguel Bombarda in Lisbon.
Sally Ashtonis Editor-in-Chief of the DMQ Review, an online journal featuring poetry and art. Two poems from DMQ were selected for inclusion in Best American Poetry 2011. She is author of Her Name Is Juanita (Kore Press 2009) and These Metallic Days (Main Street Rag). Her first full length collection Some Odd Afternoon was released from BlazeVOX in 2010. Her poems also appear in An Introduction to the Prose Poem and Breathe: 101 Contemporary Odes, as well as journals such as Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics, 5am, Mississippi Review and Poet Lore. She is the recipient of an Artist Fellowship in Poetry from the Arts Council of Silicon Valley. Ashton earned her MFA at Bennington Writing Seminars. She teaches creative writing at San José State University, frequent private poetry workshops, and lives in Los Gatos, California. She blogs at www.poetryonastick.blogspot.com and is a guest blogger for the Best American Poetry blog (http://thebestamericanpoetry.typepad.com/the_best_american_poetry/).
Hélia Correia was born near Lisbon in the village that inspired Saramago's book about the Convent’s building. She grew up under Salazar’s dictatorship. Her father was an antifascist fighter. Her mother’s family was very close to religion and popular traditions. Her family life has been a powerful influence on her work. She received degrees in Romanic Philology studies and became a teacher. She is the author of many books, notably the novel Lillias Fraser (2001) about a Scottish child who goes to Lisbon afterthe Culloden disaster and witnesses the cataclysmic 1755 earthquake. In her latest novel, Adoecer, she goes deep into the pre-raphaelite world through the affectionate portrait of Elizabeth Siddal, Rossetti’s model and wife. She also writes some theatre plays and children books on Greek classic civilization. She wrote the forward to a new Portuguese print of Wuthering Heights. She translated and adapted Shakespeare’s Midsummer’s Night Dream and The Tempest for children to be performed at the Lisbon National Theatre.
Brian Evenson is the author of ten books of fiction, most recently the limited edition novella Baby Leg, published by New York Tyrant Press in 2009. In 2009 he also published the novel Last Days (which won the American Library Association's award for Best Horror Novel of 2009) and the story collection Fugue State, both of which were on Time Out New York's top books of 2009. His novel The Open Curtain (Coffee House Press) was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an IHG Award. His work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Slovenian. He lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, where he directs Brown University's Literary Arts Program. Other books include The Wavering Knife (which won the IHG Award for best story collection), Dark Property, and Altmann's Tongue. He has translated work by Christian Gailly, Jean Frémon, Claro, Jacques Jouet, Eric Chevillard, Antoine Volodine, and others. He is the recipient of an O. Henry Prize as well as an NEA fellowship.
John Frey is a graduate of the William Esper Studio for Actors in New York City (Meisner Technique) under the teaching of William Esper, and has worked as an actor in theater, film, and television in Europe and the United States for the past fifteen years. He has also taught acting in Lisbon, Copenhagen, and New York City. John is also a screenwriter who wrote the screenplay for "The Lovebirds," shot in Lisbon, Portugal in 2007. "The Lovebirds" garnered the Best Screenplay, First Prize Award at the 2008 International Film Festival in Ourense, Spain and was also awarded a special Jury First Prize Award for Best Film at the Fantasporto International Film Festival, Portugal. John also co-wrote the feature films "The Collection" and"Delgado." The latter is based on the assasination of the Portuguese General Humberto Delgado and will begin shooting in Portugal in February, 2011.
Frank X. Gaspar was born and raised in Provincetown, Massachusetts. A Portuguese-American, his paternal grandparents immigrated from the Island of San Miguel, and his maternal grandparents from the Island of Pico, both in the Azorean Archipelago. His ancestors were traditionally whalers and Grand-Banks fishermen, sailing out of the Islands and then Provincetown. After graduating from Provincetown High School, Gaspar spent a year in New York City and then a year in Boston, Mass. before going to sea himself with the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War. After his discharge he attended colleges and universities in California, eventually earning his Master of Fine Arts degree from the Graduate Writing Program at the University of California, Irvine. He is Professor Emeritus at Long Beach City College, and currently teaches in the Graduate Writing Program at Antioch University. A number of his books treat Luso-American themes or settings, particularly the Portuguese community in Provincetown, with an insider's view of the rich ethnic base of this famously diverse Cape Cod town. His poetry and fiction have received numerous awards and honors, and serious critical attention, both in the United States and Portugal.
Margarida Vale de Gato holds a PhD. in North-American Literature and Culture. She is an Associate Researcher in the Centre for English Studies, University of Lisbon, where she also teaches literary translation. She has published several academic essays on North-American Literature, reception and translation studies, and literature and film/theatre. She is the author of the catalogue Poe in Portugal (2009) and of the poetry collection Mulher ao Mar (2010). Inter-arts is another of her research interests and she coordinated the program AIA – Arts, Ideas, Academia, in 2009. As a translator of literary texts from French and English into Portuguese, she has produced versions of Dickens, Yeats, Melville, E. A. Poe, Christina Rossetti, Kerouac, Henri Michaux, Natahalie Sarraute, and René Char, among others.
Born in June 1954 in Lisbon, Luísa Costa Gomes studied philosophy at the University of Lisbon. Gomes has published seven novels, seven collections of short stories, two librettos, 11 plays and several books for children. She has also translated Gertrude Stein, Alfred Jarry, Duras, and other writers into Portuguese. Her work has received the Literary Award of the D. Dinis Foundation (Casa de Mateus), the Prize Máxima for Literature, the Eça de Queirós Award from the City of Lisbon, and the Camilo Castelo Branco Prize from the Portuguese Writers Association. In 2000, she helped rekindle interest in the short story form in Portugal by creating the short-story magazine Ficções with the Azorean publisher Tinta Permanente. The feature film América!!! (2010; dir. João Nuno Pinto), is based on her short story “Creation of a World.”
valter hugo mãe, a novelist, poet, artist, and musician, was born in 1971 in Angola during the Portuguese administration. He studied law and has a post-graduate degree in contemporary Portuguese literature. mãe’s poetry books are collected in the volume contabilidade (2010). His four novels are: a máquina de fazer espanhóis (2010); o apocalipse dos trabalhadores (2008); o remorso de baltazar serapião (2006), which won the José Saramago Prize in 2007; and o nosso reino (2004). mãe writes about literature, art, and music for several magazines and newspapers in Portugal, and has a column called Autobiografia imaginária/Imaginary autobiography in Jornal de Letras. mãe recently became the vocalist of the pop group Governo (www.myspace.com/ogoverno).
Pedro Rosa Mendes is a journalist and fiction writer. He began his journalistic career in Coimbra, Portugal, in 1988 and joined the founders of Público the following year, going on to become the newspaper’s Luanda, Angola, correspondent. As a reporter he covered conflicts in Angola, Rwanda, Zaire/DRC, Western Sahara, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Ivory Coast, Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia, winning Portugal’s Bordalo Prize for Print Journalism in 2000. Between 2007 and 2009 he was posted in East Timor as Dili correspondent for the Agência Lusa de Notícias (the official news agency of Portugal), before becoming the agency’s correspondent in Paris, where he currently lives. Mendes’s works of fiction include Baía dos Tigres (Bay of Tigers: A Journey Through War-torn Angola), which won the PEN Club Fiction prize; Atlântico (Atlantic); and Lenin Oil, which was a collaboration with illustrator Alain Corbel. His books of reportage include Ilhas de Fogo (Islands of Fire), Madre Cacau–Timor (Mother Cacau–Timor), and Schwarz Licht, Passagen durch Westafrika (Black Light–Journey through Western Africa) with photographs by Wolf Böwig.
Josip Novakovich moved from Croatia to the U.S. at the age of twenty. He has published a novel, April Fool's Day, three story collections (Infidelities: Stories of War and Lust, Yolk, and Salvation and Other Disasters) and two collections of narrative essays as well as two books of practical criticism, including Fiction Writers Workshop. His work was anthologized in Best American Poetry, the Pushcart Prize collection, and O. Henry Prize Stories. He has received the Whiting Writer's Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, the Ingram Merrill Award, and an American Book Award, and he has been a writing fellow of the New York Public Library. He has taught at Bard, Die Freie Universitaet in Berlin, Penn State, and now, Concordia University in Montreal.
José Luís Peixoto is one of Portugal's most acclaimed and bestselling young novelists. He was born in 1974 in Galveias, in the region of Alentejo (Portugal). Has studied Modern languages and literatures in Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Since 2000, Peixoto has published ten titles (4 novels, 3 fiction books and 3 poetry collections). He is three-times a winner of the Jovens Criadores Prize. His first novel "Nenhum Olhar" (published as "Blank Gaze" in the UK by Bloomsbury and as "The Implacable Order of Things" in the USA by Doubleday/Anchor/Random House) was shortlisted in all major literary awards in Portugal and won the Jose Saramago Literary Award, delivered every two years for the best novel written in all portuguese-speaking countries. 'Nenhum Olhar' ('Blank Gaze') was selected by Financial Times as one of their best books of 2007. In the USA, it was part of 'Discover Great new writer' selection by Barnes & Noble. In Portugal, it was selected by Expresso as one of their best books of the decade. Peixoto's first fiction, 'Morreste-me' (published in the UK as 'You died on me', Warwick Review, 2010) was selected by Visão as one of their best books of the decade. In 2003, he wrote the short-story collection 'Antidote' in a joint project with the heavy metal band Moonspell, which brought in new readers all around the world. In 2007, his novel 'Cemitério de Pianos' (published as 'The Piano Cemetery' in the UK) won the Calamo Award for the best translated novel published in Spain. In 2008, he received the Daniel Faria Poetry Award. Peixoto's poetry and short-stories have appeared in a great number of anthologies on dozens of languages. All his novels have been internationally acclaimed and so, far, have been translated in 20 languages.
Jacinto Lucas Pires was born in Oporto in 1974 and now lives in Lisbon. He is the author of two novels, Do sol and Perfeitos milagres. He won the Prémio Europa–David Mourão-Ferreira (Bari University, Italy/Instituto Camões, Portugal) in 2008. His other works include Assobiar em público, a short-story collection; Azul-turquesa, a novella; and Livro usado, a travel book about Japan. He has also written theatre plays (Writing, speaking, Extras and Sagrada família, among others) and film scripts, and has directed two short films. Pires plays with the music band Os Quais, and has a column about soccer in Jornal de Notícias, a major Portuguese newspaper.
Patrícia Portela studied set and costume design, sound design, scriptwriting and documentary in Lisbon, at the European Film College in Denmark, and elsewhere. She has written and coordinated several performances including Operação Cardume Rosa, T5, Lan Tao, and Wasteband. She has also published four books, including Odilia (2007) and Para Cima e Não Para Norte (2008). A September 2010 piece, The Private Collection of Acácio Nobre, is also forthcoming as a book. Portela’s work has won numerous awards, including the Prize Acarte/Madalena Azeredo Perdigão for Flatland I, a giant multimedia book. Her Flatland Trilogy won a special mention from the association of Portuguese critics for its dramaturgy, text, and use of space. In 2009 she received funding from the Ministry of Culture to develop her research on trans-disciplinary projects under the auspices of the Prado production house.
Rogério Miguel Puga holds a Ph.D. in Anglo-Portuguese Studies. He is a Senior Researcher in the Centre for English, Translation and Anglo-Portuguese Studies (CETAPS, FCSH of the New University), where he also teaches. He collaborates on several research projects with the Centre for Portuguese Overseas History (CHAM, New University) and with the Centre for Comparative Studies (Faculty of Arts of the University of Lisbon). He was an Assistant Professor at the University of Macao (2007-2009). He has published several academic essays and books on Anglo-Portuguese Studies (Portuguese and Anglophone literatures), Travel Writing and Gender, the British and American presences in the Portuguese Asian Empire, and the History of Portuguese and British Empires. He is the editor of the European Journal of Macao Studies.
Miguel Real is the author of Ser e Representação;O Marquês de Pombal e a Cultura Portuguesa; O Último Eça; Agostinho da Silva e a Cultura Portuguesa; A Morte de Portugal; Matias Aires. As Máscaras da Vaidade Eduardo Lourenço e a Cultura Portuguesa; Padre António Vieira e a Cultura Portuguesa; José Enes. Poesia, Açores e Filosofia.
Patrícia Reis (b 1970) began her journalistic career in 1988 working in different Portuguese and international media including O independente, Sábado, Marie Claire and Time Magazine. She produced a TV show entitled Sexulidades, and she has been affiliated with the newspapers Expresso and Público and the magazine Elle. She lives in Portugal where she is the publisher of her own magazine Egoísta and a partner of Design Atelier 004. She is the author of the photo-novel Beija -me (Kiss Me, 2006) and the novella Cruz das Almas (Cross of Souls, 2004) and of the novels Amor em Segunda Mão (Second Hand Love, 2006) and Morder-te o Coração (To Bite your Heart, 2007), all published by Dom Quixote. Her most recent novel No silencio de Deus (In God's Silence) was published in Portugal in September 2008 and in March 2009 in Brazil.
Miguel Tamen specializes in philosophy and literature and Portuguese literature. His interests include the philosophy of language, interpretation, and moral philosophy, as well as aesthetics. He is Professor of Literary Theory and Chair of the Program in Literary Theory at the University of Lisbon. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago since 2000. His first book won the Portuguese PEN Club Essay Award (1987). He is the author of six books, among which are Friends of Interpretable Objects (2001) and The Matter of the Facts (2000). Two more books are forthcoming. In 2010/11 Tamen was a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow at the National Humanities Center.
João Tordo was born in Lisbon in 1975. He graduated in philosophy and studied journalism and creative writing in London and New York. Tordo works as a scriptwriter and translator, is a regular newspaper contributor, and teaches fiction workshops. He co-wrote the screenplay for the feature film Amália, a Voz do Povo (2008). Tordo has also published the novels O Livro dos Homens Sem Luz (2004), Hotel Memória (2007), and As Três Vidas (2008). His awards include the 2001 Young Artists Award and the 2009 José Saramago Prize, which is awarded by the Fundação Círculo de Leitores for the best Portuguese-language novel by an author under 35 years old. His most recent novel is O Bom Inverno (2010).
Colson Whitehead is the author of the novels The Intuitionis, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway award; John Henry Days, which won the Young Lions Fiction Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and Apex Hides the Hurt, which won the PEN/Oakland award. He has also written a book of essays about his home town, The Colossus of New York. His most recent novel, Sag Harbor, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner. Whitehead’s reviews, essays, and fiction have appeared in a number of publications, such as The New York Times, The New Yorker,, Harper's and Granta. A recipient of a Whiting Writers Award and a MacArthur Fellowship, he lives in Brooklyn.
Born in Washington DC, Richard Zenith is a long-time resident of Portugal, where he works as a free-lance writer, translator, researcher and critic. He has prepared numerous editions of Fernando Pessoa’s work and translated much of his prose and poetry into English (A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems, The Book of Disquiet, The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa and other titles). He has also translated poetry by the Galician-Portuguese troubadours, Luís de Camões, Cesário Verde, Sophia de Mello Breyner and contemporary Portuguese poets. His Education by Stone: Selected Poems, by Brazil’s João Cabral de Melo Neto, won the 2006 translation award from the Academy of American Poets. Zenith’s fiction translations include novels by António Lobo Antunes, José Luandino Vieira, and José Luís Peixoto. Author of a Fotobiografia de Fernando Pessoa, he has also published poems and a collection of short stories, Terceiras Pessoas.
