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Symposium brings together novelists of Portuguese heritage

Anthony de Sa, author of the critically acclaimed Barnacle Love, is among four authors gathering Thursday for a symposium celebrating fiction from the Portuguese diaspora.

Narratives of the Portuguese Diaspora: Emigration & Identity is presented by York’s new Portuguese Studies Program. It takes place March 25 in 280N York Lanes at 4:30pm.

Left: Anthony de Sa

The symposium aims to draw attention to York’s new Portuguese Studies Program and create awareness of the Portuguese-Canadian contribution to the cultural vibrancy of Toronto, says Maria Joao Dodman, program chair and professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures & Linguistics.

It opens with a keynote speech by Onésimo Almeida, a professor of Portuguese cultural and intellectual history at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He will give a talk titled "On the Azorean Western Islands Scattered Throughout North America – From Life To Literature". Almeida was born in the Azores and educated in Portugal and the United States. Many of his more than 20 books focus on the Portuguese--American experience.

Almeida’s talk will be followed by a round-table discussion by four authors:

  • Paulo da Costa is a writer, editor and translator raised in Portugal and living in British Columbia. His first book of fiction, The Scent of a Lie, received the 2003 Commonwealth First Book Prize for the Canada-Caribbean Region and the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize. He has published a book of poetry, Notas de Rodapé, in Portuguese and is the recipient of the 2003 ProVerbo Prize. His work has been translated into Italian, Chinese, Spanish, Serbian, Slovenian and Portuguese.
     
  • Nelsa Roberto is a Toronto-based teen-fiction writer whose debut novel, Illegally Blonde, was released this month. The coming-of-age story focuses on a girl who discovers her parents are illegal immigrants who may be deported back to Portugal.
     
  • Anthony de Sa grew up in Toronto's Portuguese community. His first novel Barnacle Love was a finalist for the 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the 2009 Toronto Book Award. His upcoming novel Carnival of Desire, to be released next year, is set in 1977, the year a 12-year-old Portuguese shoeshine boy was murdered in Toronto.
     
  • Rachel Sa is an award-winning writer whose columns have appeared in the Toronto Sun since 1998 and were collected for republication in What Rachel Sa: A Field Guide for Parents in 2002. She recently completed a young adult manuscript, The Big Box.

The symposium will close with the launch of Emigração em Dó Maior, a book by Fátima Toste and Ana Sánça.

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