Founded in 2013, with generous gift from the Saab Family Fund, the Saab Center for Portuguese Studies promotes the multidisciplinary study of the language, literature and culture of the vast and varied Portuguese speaking world comprised of over 250 million people in eight countries on four continents and its diaspora.

How Fresh Cultural Perspectives Are Attracting New Audiences to Short Fiction

The Saab Center for Portuguese Studies’ Distinguished Writers Series, in partnership with the Department of World Languages and Cultures and the Jack and Stella Kerouac Center for the Public Humanities, presents a webinar with: Prize-winning novelist and short-story author Katherine Vaz!

Monday, December 7, 2020 at 4 p.m. via Zoom

My Hunt for King Sebastian - Katherine Vaz Online Registration

After registering you will be emailed directions on how to access the webinar.

Vaz will share insights on the art of short prose—including her one biggest secret for how to make stories work. Using one of her pieces, “My Hunt for King Sebastian”, as a springboard, she will discuss how she tapped her Portuguese-American background and how fresh cultural perspectives are attracting new audiences to short fiction.

This webinar is incorporated into Prof. Diana Gomes Simões’ course The Short Story in the Lusophone World, where students will discuss Vaz’s “My Hunt for King Sebastian,” from the collection Fado & Other Stories (1997).

About Katherine Vaz

Katherine Vaz is the author of two critically-acclaimed novels, Saudade (a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection) and Mariana, published in six languages and picked by the Library of Congress as one of the Top 30 International Books of 1998. Her collection Fado & Other Stories won the Drue Heinz Literature Prize and Our Lady of Artichokes and Other Portuguese-American Stories the Prairie Schooner Award. Her latest book is The Love Life an Assistant Animator & Other Stories. The short story “Revenge in the Name of all Owls” is referenced in The Best American Short Stories 2020. Vaz has been a Briggs-Copeland Fellow in Fiction at Harvard and Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

More Information

For more information, please contact Natália Melo by email: Natalia_Melo@uml.edu or phone: 978-934-5199.

My Hunt for King Sebastian - Katherine Vaz Online Registration

The Saab Center for Portuguese Studies’ Distinguished Writers Series, in collaboration with the Jack and Stella Kerouac Center for the Public Humanities and the Department of English and World Languages and Cultures, presents a webinar:

Readings and Conversations with Mozambican author Mia Couto

Monday, November 2, 2020 at 4 p.m., on Zoom
Moderated by Prof. Diana Gomes Simões

About Mia Couto

Mia Couto, born in Beira, Mozambique in 1955, is one of the leading Lusophone writers today. He is the bestselling author of eleven novels, many collections of short stories, three collections of poetry, and five children’s books. He was awarded the Camões Prize for Literature in 2013 and the Neustadt International Literature Prize in 2014, and was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize in 2015 and shortlisted for International Dublin Literary Prize in 2017. His latest publication in the US is a short story in The Decameron Project just published by the New York Times. He has also worked as a journalist and is a professor of Biology at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo. This webinar is incorporated into Prof. Diana Gomes Simões’ course The Short Story in the Lusophone World, where students will read and discuss Couto’s “The Bird Dreaming Baobab” (see attachment) from the collection Every Man is a Race (1989).

More Information

For more information, please contact Natália Melo by email: Natalia_Melo@uml.edu or phone: 978-934-5199.

Thursday, October 15, 4 p.m.

The Saab Center for Portuguese Studies presents:
A Virtual Lecture / Book Talk with James McGlinchey, author of The Final Report: A History of the Portuguese-American Citizenship Project, 1999-2016

Please register online using the link below and you will receive access via email.

The Portuguese American Citizenship Project was established in 1999 with support from the Luso-American Foundation to encourage Portuguese-Americans to participate more fully in civic affairs and gain a stronger voice in governance. The Final Report: A History of the Portuguese American Citizenship Project, 1999-2016 is a study in civic engagement that documents the Project’s non-partisan, data-driven programs to promote U.S. citizenship, voter registration, and voting. From 1999 to 2009, James McGlinchey served as the coordinator of the Project, working with churches, clubs and social welfare organizations on grass-roots civic campaigns in communities ranging from post-industrial cities in New England to farming communities in California.

About The Author

James Martin McGlinchey was a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State 1975-1999. His last overseas posting was as the Counselor for Economic Affairs at the U.S. Embassy, Lisbon. Mr. McGlinchey holds an MA in Economics from the University of Kansas a second MA in Public Administration from Harvard University. He was born in Fall River, MA, and traces his Portuguese roots back to his maternal grandparents who immigrated to the United States from the Azores Islands at the turn of the 20th century.

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