Writer's Corner Writer's Corner: Frank X. Gaspar: Interview on 97.3 WJFD-FM

In 2024, Tagus Press published a new edition of Frank X. Gaspar’s acclaimed novel Leaving Pico.

In Provincetown's insular Portuguese fishing community, Josie Carvalho’s life has been shaped by the annual influx of summer tourists and his great aunt’s fervent, if idiosyncratic, Catholicism. The counterweight to these forces has always been Josie’s relationship with his grandfather, John Joseph, a drunk, clam-poaching old man who is nevertheless a sly and masterful storyteller.

After a stranger starts dating Josie's mother and upsets the family's equilibrium, John Joseph heals the rift with the colorful and adventurous stories of their ancestor, Francisco Carvalho, a Portuguese explorer who just may have beaten Columbus to the New World. With the guidance of these obscure but inspired tales, Josie begins to find new ways of understanding his family and the outside world. This new, revised edition of Leaving Pico, featuring Antonio Ladeira's foreword, makes Frank X. Gaspar's award-winning coming-of-age novel accessible to a new generation of readers.

Frank X. Gaspar, born and raised in Provincetown, Massachusetts, is the author of five collections of poetry and two novels. Leaving Pico was a Barnes and Noble Discovery Prize winner, the California Book Award for First Fiction recipient, and a New York Times Notable Book.

Leaving Pico is volume 28 of the Portuguese in the Americas Series, edited by Francisco Cota Fagundes (UMass Amherst).

Please join host Irene de Amaral and Frank X. Gaspar for a discussion of Leaving Pico on WJFD.

To purchase a print copy of Leaving Pico, please visit the University of Massachusetts Press website or Amazon.