Katherine Vaz “The Treasure Hunt of August Dias,” The Common magazine (Fall, 2020)

Katherine Vaz speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her short story “The Treasure Hunt of August Dias,” which appears in Issue 20 of The Common magazine. In this conversation, Vaz talks about her long career of writing novels and short stories about Portuguese and Portuguese-American characters, and their rich, complex communities. She also discusses her current project, a heavily researched historical novel about Portuguese immigrants set during the Civil War.

Katherine Vaz is the author of the novels Saudade and Mariana, the latter translated in six languages. Her story collection Fado & Other Stories won the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, and the collection Our Lady of the Artichokes & Other Portuguese-American Stories won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize. She is the first Portuguese American to have her work recorded for the archives of the Library of Congress, and she served on the six-person Presidential Delegation to the World’s Fair in Lisbon in 1998. She is a teacher of “Writing the Luso Experience,” a workshop at the DISQUIET conference each summer in Lisbon.

Read “The Treasure Hunt of August Dias” by Katherine Vaz at thecommononline.org/the-treasure-hunt-of-august-dias.

Learn more about Katherine Vaz and her work at katherinevaz.com, and find her books and collections here.

Follow Katherine Vaz on Twitter at @KatherineVaz1.

The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Twitter @CommonMag.

Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She holds an MA in literature from Queen Mary University of London, and a BA from Smith College. Say hello on Twitter @Public_Emily.

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