Blog
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New Fiction in Grain Magazine
Issue 42.1 of Grain Magazine – Hearing Voices – is out now, featuring artwork by Wilf Perreault, and new work by Gary Geddes, Paul Cresey, Robert Currie, paulo da costa (fiction), among many others authors.
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Mara Bettencourt sings poem by paulo da costa
Mara Bettencourt, Boston, has put to music one of my English poems from The Book of Water. Take a peek at an excerpt from this music video recorded during the 2013 AzoresFringe Festival, in a vineyard with a background view of Pico’s volcano. For more information on this visually gorgeous documentary please go to: Mirateca Documentaries
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Malahat Review – Seamless Stories Haunt
The January 2014 issue (#185) of the University of Victoria’s Malahat Review features a review of The Green and Purple Skin of the World. Fiction Review by Norma Lundberg The Green and Purple Skin of the World: Stories by paulo da costa (Freehand, 2013). Paperbound, 208 pp., $21.95 The sixteen stories in this collection proceed so seamlessly a reader might initially suspect them of being slight—a smooth skin of words, a faint echo from the title. But just as our skin is only the surface of our complex bodies, these stories are alive with characters in their own complicated worlds. They slowly enter the reader and haunt…
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Memória: An Anthology of Portuguese Canadian Writers
This first anthology of Portuguese Canadian writers serves as a superb introduction which cogently illustrates the emerging presence of Portuguese literary voices within the Canadian landscape. Embedded in its cultural meaning system, it provides a background upon which the scope of the texts can be located. In fact, the poetic and narrative texts, central to the fabric woven throughout this volume, involve not only the exploration of narrative memory and identity, but also paint a vibrant picture of the Portuguese diasporic world in which these writers live. Congratulations to editor Fernanda Viveiros for the initiative, and for presenting us with this rich and sophisticated selection. I am confident that the…
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The Midwife of Torment
(…) Felismina, the town curandeira, a woman accustomed to probing the depths of the psyche, a midwife of torment, heard about Florindo’s condition. She believed him. “If the boy says he stinks, he stinks. Who are we? Do we wear his skin, smell his nightmares?” Florindo Ramos sought her intercession in the matter. After consulting her wrinkled manuals, brushing the dust off her skirt, Felismina declared, “I dug up one antidote, boy. Only one. But, for it to work you must be willing to look the nightmare in the face.” Florindo shuddered, scrubbed his face with the handkerchief in his hand. “Unless you want to live with things as…
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Pleasant Troubles
A sudden, involuntary flaring of his tongue, a hideous contortion of his face; and apart from this peculiar affliction, Bonifácio Careta remained an ordinary child. The villagers believed everyone entered life with unique, God-given graces—some born to nose-picking, others to continuous spitting, others to limping. They never spent a second thought on Bonifácio. Bonifácio Careta’s life would have proceeded without remarkable attention if misfortune had not brought his peculiar condition to public notice. Bonifácio’s fortunes changed irrevocably on the occasion of the long-awaited Papal tour of the country with the Pontiff’s brief, unscheduled bathroom stop in Bonifácio’s forgotten village. While the Pontiff bestowed upon the gathering crowd his holy blessing,…
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Art is the next Textile Industry – by Thorsten Nesch
Creative thoughts on the future livelihood of writers from German author Thorsten Nesch. “Art is the next Textile Industry” Dear reader, the headline is not my opinion and I hope we artists won’t go down that road but I’ll get back to this statement I had to hear later. Now I want to publicly answer an e-mail by my Canadian colleague and friend Paulo da Costa who forwarded the article „The artists struggle to survive in age of the blockbuster“ by Russell Smith, published in The Globe and Mail, Thursday, November 28, 2013. Russell Smith announces that the Internet didn’t live up to its alleged possibilities of individual niche…
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Atlantis – sang by Nancy Dutra
Talented Canadian singer Nancy Dutra has put to music one of my English poems from The Book of Water. Nancy has a distinctive and powerful voice that will delight any listener. Take a peek at this music video recorded under a Dragon Tree in Pico, Azores during the 2013 AzoresFringe Festival. And stay tuned for future collaborations between myself and Nancy. A talentosa cantora canadiana Nancy Dutra musicou e interpretou um dos meus poemas em língua inglesa e do meu manuscrito: The Book of Water. A Nancy tem uma voz marcante e poderosa que irá encantar qualquer ouvinte. Aproveitem para dar uma olhada neste vídeo gravado sob uma árvore Dragão…
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The Green and Purple Skin of the World – The Quill & Quire Review
The May issue of Quill & Quire features a review of The Green and Purple Skin of the World. The world described in paulo da costa’s second book of short fiction is a sensual one. A poet and translator, da costa favours imagistic language to explore characters’ relationships to one another and to nature, depicting a scenic tapestry of interpersonal phenomena that spans love, war, aging, and death. The book’s 16 stories tend to be brief, but the longer and more complex pieces are the most satisfying. A prioritization of setting and atmosphere over plot is established in the first story, “Flies,” in which two older Portuguese men lament the…
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Beneath Thin Skin – BC Bookworld feature
In BC’s Bookworld Summer Issue: a brief blurb and mini-interview on my new book. Beneath Thin Skin Possibly B.C.’s only Angolan-born author, paulo da costa was raised in Vale de Cambra, Portugal and arrived in Canada in 1989. Having won Best First Book, Canada & Caribbean Region of the Commonwealth Writers Prize 2003, the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize in 2002 and the Canongate Prize for Short-Fiction in 2001, da costa moved to B.C. in 2003 and now lives on Vancouver Island. His stories have been translated to Italian, Chinese, Spanish, Serbian, Slovenian and Portuguese. His new fiction collection is The Green and Purple Skin of the World…
