The publication of a new issue of Filamentos is never merely the arrival of another magazine. It is the continuation of a conversation—one that began across islands, oceans, languages, and generations, and which continues to grow with every page we publish.

With great pleasure, we announce the release of Filamentos – Arts & Letters, Issue #16, now available both as an e-book and as a paperback through Amazon, making it accessible to readers wherever they may be. This milestone issue is dedicated entirely to the work of Bruma Publications, celebrating the remarkable literary journey that has unfolded since the publication of its first volume in September 2022.

The Books We Send Across the Sea

Appropriately, the issue opens with an editorial by Diniz Borges entitled The Books We Send Across the Sea, a meditation on the enduring importance of books in preserving memory, culture, language, and identity. It is an essay that reminds us that publishing is not simply about producing volumes; it is about building bridges.

In fewer than four years, Bruma Publications has released thirty-six books, an extraordinary achievement for an independent press rooted in the Portuguese-American and Azorean experience. Yet the editorial wisely reminds us that the true measure of those books is not quantity but devotion. Each volume represents an act of faith in literature and in the belief that our stories deserve to be preserved, translated, shared, and read.

The essay beautifully argues that communities cannot survive on fragments alone. Photographs, memories, festas, recipes, and family stories matter deeply, but books provide something more enduring. They transform memory into conversation and experience into legacy. They allow a people not only to remember where they came from, but also to understand who they are becoming.

Translation occupies a central place in this vision. The editorial celebrates translation as one of literature’s most generous acts, allowing ideas born in one language to discover a second life in another. For diasporic communities, translation becomes even more essential, creating pathways through which younger generations can encounter the intellectual and artistic traditions of their ancestors. It is, in many ways, the literary equivalent of a bridge suspended across the Atlantic.

A Literary Showcase of Bruma Publications

Issue #16 serves as both anthology and invitation. Within its pages readers encounter excerpts, introductions, reviews, essays, poems, and reflections drawn from a remarkable collection of books published by Bruma Publications in partnership with scholars, writers, translators, artists, and cultural institutions on both sides of the ocean.

Featured works include:

• Between Silence and Vision: António Dacosta and the Sense of Belonging in Painting by Assunção Melo.
• Count Me Out: The Education of Paul Francisco by Anthony Barcellos.
• Conjugation of Maps by Regina Correia.
• The Elderly by Paula de Sousa Lima.
• Azorean History Themes: Islands of Struggle and Resilience by Carlos Enes.
• The Cartography of an Island Traveler by Joaquim Flores.
• Pessoa’s Terceira.
• Bento de Goes by Henrique Levy.
• Poetry from Prayers and Supplications / Songs of Hopelessness, among other works.

Together these books reveal the breadth of Bruma’s mission: literature, history, poetry, translation, memoir, scholarship, cultural criticism, and the many voices that connect the Azores, Portugal, California, and the wider Portuguese-speaking world.

More Than a Magazine

This sixteenth issue is also a celebration of Filamentos itself. What began as a literary experiment has become a growing international forum where writers, translators, artists, scholars, and readers meet across borders. The partnership with Moonwater Editions now allows the magazine to exist both digitally and in print, ensuring that these conversations can travel farther than ever before.

Books, after all, remain among humanity’s most extraordinary inventions. They outlive their authors. They cross oceans without passports. They preserve voices long after silence arrives.

And that is precisely what this issue celebrates.

Filamentos #16 is an invitation to explore the books that Bruma Publications has launched into the world over the past four years—books born from islands and diasporas, from memory and imagination, from scholarship and storytelling. They are vessels carrying language, culture, and identity across generations and geographies.

We invite our readers to join us on this journey.

Filamentos – Arts & Letters, Issue #16, a joint venture of Bruma Publications and Moonwater Editions, is now available as both an e-book and a paperback through Amazon.

Page after page. Book after book. Island after island. Word after word. The voyage continues.

Filamentos: Arts & Letters is a transatlantic literary platform devoted to the ongoing conversation between the Azores and its far-reaching diaspora. Published under the auspices of the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute at California State University, Fresno, Filamentos gathers poetry, essays, literary criticism, interviews, translations, and cultural reflections that trace the shifting horizons of Portuguese-language writing and its vibrant encounters with English-language traditions.
Like the fine threads suggested by its name, Filamentos weaves together voices scattered across geographies yet bound by memory, language, and imagination. From the islands of the Azores to mainland Portugal, from the Portuguese communities of North America and Brazil to readers and writers elsewhere in the world, the publication creates a space where literature becomes both archive and horizon—preserving stories of origin while opening paths toward new forms of expression.
At its heart, Filamentos is an act of literary crossing. It honors translation as a creative bridge, criticism as a form of attentive listening, and the written word as a means of sustaining cultural dialogue across generations and oceans. In bringing together writers, scholars, artists, and readers, the journal affirms that literature thrives not in isolation but in movement—in the crossings of languages, cultures, and seas that continue to shape the Portuguese-speaking world and its global imagination.