Katherine Vaz is an American writer. A Briggs-Copeland Fellow in Fiction at Harvard University, a 2006-7 Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and the Fall, 2012 Harman Fellow at Baruch College in New York, she is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Saudade, the first contemporary novel about Portuguese-Americans from a major New York publisher. It was optioned by Marlee Matlin/Solo One Productions and selected in the Barnes & Nobles Discover Great New Writers series. Her second novel, Mariana, was selected by the Library of Congress as one of the Top 30 International Books of 1998 and has been translated into six languages. Vaz's first short story collection Fado & Other Stories received the 1997 Drue Heinz Literature Prize and her second collection, Our Lady of the Artichokes, won the 2007 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. Vaz is a recipient of a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Davis Humanities Institute Fellowship. 

August 26th, 1955 in (Age 69)