A weekly publication & conversation series
Now through December 19, when Vitorino Nemésio would have been 125 years old (born on December 19th, 1901, and passed on February 20th, 1978)

From the shore of the Azores to the world.

About the Series

To mark the 125th anniversary of Vitorino Nemésio’s birth (December 19, 1901), the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute at Fresno State launches a weekly publication and engagement series dedicated to bringing Nemésio’s work—poetry, fiction, essays, and cultural thought—into English and into renewed global conversation.

Each week, from now until December 19, this series will present translated excerpts, critical reflections, contextual essays, and pedagogical readings, inviting students, scholars, educators, and the general public to encounter Nemésio not as a distant canonical figure, but as a living voice—deeply human, Atlantic, modern, and universal.

Mission

To translate, interpret, and circulate the work of Vitorino Nemésio for English-speaking audiences, affirming literature as a bridge between islands and continents, memory and modernity, local experience and universal meaning.

Vision

We envision a Nemésio read across generations and geographies:

• read in classrooms and seminars,
• read by scholars and first-time readers alike,
• read not only as “Azorean” or “Portuguese,” but as a writer of the Atlantic world, where culture is formed by movement, inheritance, and dialogue.

This series seeks to honor Nemésio’s belief that literature is not separation but relation—a way of knowing the world by listening closely to where one stands.

Why Nemésio, Now

Born in Praia da Vitória, surrounded by sea and community, Nemésio transformed insular life into a cosmopolitan literature of depth and compassion. Poet, novelist, essayist, critic, professor, broadcaster—he refused the narrowness of a single genre or identity. His work reminds us that culture is made not by purity, but by circulation.

At a moment when borders harden and languages retreat, Nemésio offers another model:
to belong without enclosure, to remember without nostalgia, to speak from place while addressing the world.

Presented by

Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI)
California State University, Fresno