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James H. Gray Award for Short Nonfiction
WGA CNF Award HR Winners of the 2020 Alberta Literary Awards The Writers’ Guild of Alberta is pleased to announce the winners of the 2020 Alberta Literary Awards. This year’s award winners were announced in an online video release on June 4th. The video is available to watch on our Facebook page and YouTube channel. This celebration marks the 38th anniversary of the Alberta Literary Awards and brought together writers from across Alberta.The Alberta Literary Awards were created by the Writers’ Guild of Alberta in 1982 to recognize excellence in writing by Alberta authors. This year, jurors deliberated over 220 submissions to select winners in the following eight categories. James…
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Canadian Writers Abroad – reviews Midwife of Torment
The Midwife of Torment & Other Stories, Guernica Editions: 2017, 202 pages. Reviewed by Irene Marques Calling Us into Seeing and Being More: “Me” and the World The Midwife of Torment & Other Stories by paulo da costa is a book of short stories, or sudden fictions [under 1,000 words], divided into six parts: “Affections,” “Slowness,” “Aqua Libera,” “Beneath Our Beds,” “Force” and “Fathers.” In this collection, we find provoking thoughts unveiled slowly in an incantatory, lyrical language, revealing our deepest yearnings, frustrations, losses, insufficiencies, and happiness(es), too. His work makes us see, feel and be more: to have profound insights into our lives and the world; to understand…
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Poetic & Lyrical – impressions by Irene Marques
Irene Marques on Beyond Bullfights & Ice Hockey (essays) Paulo da Costa has a poetic and lyrical voice that is beautiful. It is an appeasing murmur conducive to meditation putting into question the acceptance of the mundane or the fashions of the moment which are often guided by economic pressures that erase us all under a blanket of sameness. It is a voice that wants the power of the word to remain pure so that it can reach us at a deep level and have an impact that goes well beyond the facades of easy, cheap rhetoric. It is a writing that asks you to slow down, to pause, in order…
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The Guest who refuses to be polite – impressions by Emanuel Melo
I’m hanging out with paulo da costa these days. On the crowded subway ride to work in the morning and again in the evening on the way home I listen to him; those around me don’t. But I prefer listening to him when I get inside my solitude, sitting on my sofa, in the quiet of my library, where I can be attentive without the pull of people’s chatter. Even at four in the morning, when I cannot sleep, he is still talking. Non-stop. He is the guest who refuses to go home at a decent hour and so, to be polite, I let him speak his words. He gives…
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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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Enclosures
New essay in Queen’s Quarterly
Beneath Thin Skin – BC Bookworld feature
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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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Sharp and True – a book review by the Coastal Spectator
Collection’s stories are sharp and true May 23, 2013 The Green and Purple Skin of the World By paulo da costa Freehand Books, 208 pages, $21.95 Reviewed by Yasuko Thanh Born in Angola, raised in Portugal, paulo da costa won the Commonwealth First Book Prize in 2003 for his collection The Scent of a Lie. In The Green and Purple Skin of the World, his first book of short fiction in 10 years, language and its power form a thread through many of the stories and words are highlighted in entertaining characters such as Dona Branca, who collects newspaper clippings of disasters and glues them in an old photo album.…
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Unhurried & Meditative – A National Post review
paulo da costa is concerned with the passage of time and its effects on generational attitudes and memories. Da costa’s writing is recondite, preferring a lyrical, almost poetic style of narration. The stories in The Green and Purple Skin of the World (Freehand Books, 206 pp; $21.95) have an unhurried, meditative aspect that suits the material, but can also be wearisome over the course of an entire collection. The Table is typical of many of the stories in the book. Not much happens on the level of plot; the author is more concerned with dissecting the relationship between a mother and her son, and using that relationship to examine the…
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Literary Bites in Bits: A Short Story List by paulo da costa
Each book in this selection is sliced in bite-sized portions, yet none miss any of the essential vitamins and minerals, delivering satisfying nourishment despite their small portions. Think of them as power-bars. These six books share in common a succinct, power-charged delivery of texts in condensed servings that leave me purring and yummying with delight. For those readers, like me, who appreciate snacking, these works exemplify the type of book I carry around in my shoulder bag, to sneak, peek and bite into, while waiting in lines, while moving along the day-to-day river of busyness. (…) Complete feature here
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Impressive Stories – Edmonton Journal
