California Navigations/Navegações a California:
Portuguese-American Poets and Writers
presence/presença, named by the poet, Frank X. Gaspar, provides a community for North American writers of the Portuguese and Lusophone diaspora and aims to address the relative absence of Luso-American voices in contemporary letters.
Twitter: @PPresence • facebook.com/PresencePresenca • presencepresenca.wordpress.com
Susan Kelly-DeWitt‘s maternal great-grandparents emigrated from São Miguel in the Azores, traveling by clipper ship around Cape Horn, to settle on the island of Hawaii in the late nineteenth century. Her chapbook Cassiopeia Above the Banyan Tree (Rattlesnake Press) explores some of that Portuguese heritage. Susan is the author of a number of collections, including The Fortunate Islands; her work also appears in many national and regional anthologies. Visit her website: www.susankelly-dewitt.com.
Tony John Roma immigrated in utero to California from the island of São Jorge. He grew up in San Leandro among the last great wave of Portuguese immigrants to the area. He graduated from Sacramento State, where he was a recipient of the Bazzanella Literary Award for short fiction.
Linette Escobar is a Portuguese-American poet whose work has appeared in Babilonia, Transfer and the Santa Clara Review. She is currently working on a memoir about her expression working in Thailand as a tsunami volunteer.
Tim Kahl is the author of two volumes of poetry and has translated from Portuguese to English the works of Brazilian authors Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Lêdo Ivo, Carlos Nejar, Clarice Lispector, Gilberto Mendonça Teles, Miguel Marvilla, Marly de Oliveira, João Cabral de Melo Neto, Vinicius de Moraes, and Denise Emmer. He has also translated the poems of Mozambique’s Jose Craveirinha and the early poems of the Portuguese language’s only Nobel laureate Jose Saramago.
Catherine Fraga’s poetry has been widely published in numerous literary journals. Many of her poems reflect her experiences growing up in a Portuguese family in the Bay Area. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Running Away with Gary, the Mattress Salesman (poems) is published by Poet’s Corner Press.
Lara Gularte’s family emigrated to California from the Azore islands in the late 1800’s. Her poetic work depicting her Azorean heritage is included in The Gávea-Brown Book of Portuguese-American Poetry. Gularte has been published in many journals and anthologies. Her poetry manuscript, “Kissing The Bee,” is scheduled to be published by Tagus Press. She is an assistant editor for Narrative Magazine.
