Katherine Vaz

lecturer, fiction, Harvard

Katherine Vaz, a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard University and a 2006-7 Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, is the author of *Saudade *(1994), which received critical acclaim as the first contemporary novel from a major New York publisher about Portuguese-Americans. Barnes & Noble included it in their Discover Great New Writers series. Saudade appeared in Portuguese in 1999 and immediately made the bestsellers list. Film rights were optioned by Marlee Matlin and Solo One Productions. As recipient of the 1997 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, Vaz had her story collection, *Fado & Other Stories*, published in October, 1997, by the University of Pittsburgh Press. The book, translated into Portuguese in 2002, was favorably reviewed by *The New York Times*, *The Washington Post*, *The Boston Globe*, *The Times Literary Supplement of London*, *The International Herald Tribune*, and many other publications. Her second collection, *Our Lady of the Artichokes and Other Portuguese-American Stories*, won the 2007 Prairie Schooner Book Prize and was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2008. Two stories were shortlisted in *Best American*, one received an Honorable Mention in the Zoetrope All-Story Fiction Contest, and another received Honorable Mention in the Pushcart Prizes. Vaz's non-fiction has appeared in *The New York Times*. She also writes occasional book reviews for *The Boston Globe*. Katherine Vaz received a Grant Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1993, as well as several research grants from the University of California. She received a Davis Humanities Institute Fellowship for Spring, 1999.