Katherine Vaz

Katherine Vaz has been a Briggs-Copeland Fellow in Fiction at Harvard University and Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is the author of three novels, SAUDADE (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 won a Drue Heinz Literature Prize and OUR LADY OF THE ARTICHOKES won a Prairie Schooner Award. THE LOVE LIFE OF AN ASSISTANT ANIMATOR & OTHER STORIES was published by Tailwinds Press and 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 and 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 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. 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.