Richard Simas

Richard Simas is a free–lance writer with a background in literature, music, and the performing arts. He contributes regularly to contemporary art and literary reviews in Europe and in North America, including the Journey Prize anthology and a Fiddlehead Fiction Prize. His short fiction is included in the recent Memória, an anthology of Portuguese Canadian writers. He contributes regularly to Toronto’s Musicworks magazine. In 2011 he attended the Disquiet International Literature program in Lisbon, thanks to a Camões Institute prize, and in 2012 published a series of interviews with 4 contemporary Portuguese writers. Over the last five years he has published a series of essays about exploring Portuguese immigrant heritage and the notion of (re)learning Portuguese from a diaspora perspective. In Montreal, Simas founded Théâtre La Chapelle, an interdisciplinary performing venue dedicated to multidisciplinary experimentation. He currently performs with a nine–member street band named Valody whose New Music–Spoken word performance based on Fernando Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet premiered at the Open Ears festival in Kitchener Ontario. He co–organizes the Café com letras lusophone literature readings in Montreal.