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Free the Caged Melros: A Review of trust the bluer skies in Prism International – by Irene Marques
Check out this insightful and in-depth review of Trust the Bluer Skies featured in Prism International Magazine out of UBC and Vancouver. Available to be read on their website. When was the last time you read a thoughtful review that was 1600 words long? My gratitude to Toronto scholar, Irene Marques, who for years has been a phenomenal supporter of my writing and of my books. Bem hajas. Excerpt of review : “Portuguese cultural traditions of bullfighting and other forms of animal cruelty are reprimanded. The idea that such traditions should be defended because they are part of national identity is refuted…” Full review in the link below. https://prismmagazine.ca/…/free-the-caged-melros-a… August…
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paulo da costa interviewed by the Calgary Herald
Check out today’s Calgary Herald and their book section. They feature an article and interview about my fatherhood memoir. Thank you Eric Volmers for being interested in Trust the Bluer Skies and for being such a great supporter of local creatives in our city. Obrigado. https://calgaryherald.com/entertainment/books/letters-to-a-son-calgary-author-offers-meditations-on-fatherhood-with-memoir-trust-the-bluer-skies
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Foreword Magazine Review
AUTOBIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR Trust the Bluer Skies : Meditations on Fatherhood paulo da costa, University of Regina Press Softcover $24.95 (256pp) 978-0-88977-995-2 paulo da costa’s heartbreaking memoir Trust the Bluer Skies is a bittersweet ode to memories of lost times and places. The book explores da costa’s relationship with his four-year-old son, Koah, during a months- long, pivotal trip from Canada to da costa’s birth- place in rural Portugal, undertaken in an effort to expose Koah to his heritage and extended family life. The book is intentional in considering how traditions are passed from one generation to another, as from a loving father to his son. In Portugal, da costa…
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Review of Bluer Skies by Lindsay Wincherauk
audio and written review – click to view
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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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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…
