Katherine_Vaz
Katherine Vaz
American writer (born 1955)
Katherine Vaz (born August 26, 1955) is a Portuguese-American writer. A Briggs-Copeland Fellow in Fiction at Harvard University (2003–2009), a 2006–2007 Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study,[1] and the Fall, 2012 Harman Fellow at Baruch College in New York,[2] she is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Above the Salt, which was chosen as one of People Magazine's Best New Books to Read in November, 2023.[3]
Vaz's novel Saudade (St. Martin’s Press, 1994) is the first contemporary novel about Portuguese-Americans from a major New York publisher. It was optioned by Marlee Matlin/Solo One Productions and selected in the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers series.[4]
Her novel, Mariana, (HarperCollins, 1997), was selected by the Library of Congress as one of the Top 30 International Books of 1998 and has been translated into six languages.[1]
Vaz's first short story collection Fado & Other Stories received the 1997 Drue Heinz Literature Prize[5] and her second collection, Our Lady of the Artichokes, won the 2007 Prairie Schooner Book Prize.[6]
Vaz is a recipient of a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (1993) [7] and the Davis Humanities Institute Fellowship (1999). She has been named by the Luso-Americano as one of the Top 50 Luso-Americanos of the twentieth century [8] and is the first Portuguese-American to have her work recorded for the Library of Congress, housed in the Hispanic Division. The Portuguese-American Women’s Association (PAWA) named her 2003 Woman of the Year.[9] She was appointed to the six-person U.S. Presidential Delegation to open the American Pavilion at the World’s Fair/Expo 98 in Lisbon.[10] She lives in New York City and the Springs area of East Hampton with Christopher Cerf, whom she married in July 2015.[11]