The stories in this prize-winning collection evoke a complete world, one so richly imagined and finely realized that the stories themselves are not so much read as experienced. The world of these sto
Winner of the 1997 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, Fado and Other Stories is filled with narrative and character grounded in the meaning and value the earth gives to human existence. Katherine Vaz is nev
Young widow Brenda Márquez resides in unglamorous Hayward, California, with her sullen daughter, Blanca, and pregnant Gina, an unwed teen with a history in gangs. Stuck in a dead-end job at the DMV, B
Henry turns to watch a pretty woman pass, and in that instant his young daughter, Mary, is struck and killed by a bus. Tender; gorgeously told in bold, vibrant strokes; and utterly shocking in both it
Nathan Porter, a young war veteran haunted by an atrocity he witnessed, ends up in an animation studio in southern California, where his dismal romantic history is upended by Violet Delmar, an older v
This beautiful, exotic novella follows Catarina (Cat) as she, in turn, follows the wish of her father, dying in San Francisco, to sell his old Lisbon apartment. When Cat arrives in Portugal, she disco
Vaz is well-known for her stories set in the unglamorous parts of the San Francisco East Bay, with their poignant images, crisp dialogue, and swift pacing. From the opening line of The Glass Eaters -
