By Carolina Matos, Editor
João Pedro Porto, born in the Azores in 1984, has established himself as one of the most distinctive contemporary voices in Portuguese literature. A novelist, poet, and psychotherapist, Porto’s work bridges myth and modernity, psychological depth and lyrical experimentation. His writing has been praised by renowned author Valter Hugo Mãe, who described it as “luxurious, performative, and absolute.”
Within a very particular literary universe and with a wide production, he has published six novels, six books of poetry and three compilations of short stories. His pen has also produced lyrics for acclaimed musical albums, plays and scripts, as well as translations of many authors and genres.
With a Master’s degree in Applied Psychology from the Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada (ISPA), Porto embodies a new generation of Portuguese authors who combine experimental form with existential paradoxes.
A rebellious voice in the new literary wave, Porto is the author of four acclaimed novels: Porta Azul para Macau, O 2egundo M1nuto, O Rochedo que Chorou, and A Brecha. In addition to fiction, he has published the short story O Homem da Mansarda and contributed to the anthology O País Invisível.
In 2025, Porto received national recognition with the Prémio Literário Natália Correia for his poetry collection Não – Poema. The jury praised the maturity of its poetic voice, placing Porto in direct dialogue with Portugal’s tradition of writers who use literature as a form of resistance, remaining deeply rooted in both cultural myth and existential questions.
In this interview for the Portuguese American Journal, João Pedro Porto reflects on identity, rupture, resistance, and resilience, exploring how he carries the Azorean imaginary into the broader Portuguese literary narrative. Whether in prose, poetry, or lyrics, he reveals how his experimental and rebellious streak positions him within a dialogue between displacement and belonging.
Q. In your journey to establish yourself as a writer, what happened in your life that inspired you to become a writer, and what motivates you to write?
A. My journey into narrative creation began long before I started writing. Even before the age of five, my mother would tell me stories and encourage me to create my own. In terms of language acquisition, I connect this to the Lacanian concept of lalangue—the impact, inscription, and imprint that language leaves on us. For me, that mark was benevolent, like a natural musical cadence inscribed in the breath and woven into the rhythms of the autonomic nervous system.
It also helped that I grew up in a family of writers and musicians, where words and music flowed together as an inseparable whole. Writing and composing became, for me, two expressions of the same creative impulse.
I believe it was this environment, along with the phantasmagoric memories of my earliest readings, that guided me toward the verb to write—and, in time, to publishing.
Q. Born and raised in the Azores, after settling in mainland Portugal, you have described yourself as having a sense of belonging without fully belonging. How do you reconcile displacement and belonging?
A. Those sentiments are not truly about belonging to a place, to people, or to a movement. They are all replicas of precocious sensations felt with primary figures—like comfort, or nostalgia, for example. We are all made of loss. That is the price of living: to lose things and others while losing ourselves. What builds us does so by hollowing us. It is one of the many human paradoxes. Nonetheless, I feel that my early contact with the narratives of others, and the many readings that followed, carried me to many places, with many people, along many currents, leaving me with a nomadic sense. A nomad in fiction will always be someone who does not cling to one thing with all their strength. If I had to choose, I would say that I belong to my library more than to any other place. And that is truly a fortune, for in it I find twenty thousand windows to other worlds.
Although mediation is part of my profession, I also believe that we are not only paradoxical beings but also dialectical, beginning with the systole of our hearts, the inhalation and exhalation of our breath. Therefore, reconciliation between opposites should not be seen as a prerogative. Perhaps accepting that both can exist simultaneously, in their antithetical forms, is the best way to approach it. I believe that if disparate feelings can coexist within us, then this too is entirely possible. Feeling both displacement and belonging at the same time is nothing more than a natural bodily rhythm, like the movement of a Newton’s cradle.
Q. Much of your writing, especially O Rochedo que Chorou, is deeply rooted in the Azorean landscape and mythology. Do you consider yourself an “Azorean writer,” a “Portuguese writer,” or both, and does such a distinction matter to you?
A. I don’t think I have ever written about Azorean mythology or its landscape. I do try to ensure that my writings transcend space and time, without such limitations. You see, I am interested in what is not there, not in what is already there. I would never be interested in writing about the life of a real person or the true story of a place. What drives me is inventing people and places, inventing real people, if you will have me. That is why I do not consider myself a chronicler of a place or a given culture. I am a fiction writer. The possibility of fiction as the greatest weapon of freedom matters to me more than anything else. Non-determinism and freedom are the characteristics that define us, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau said. For me, confinement, which has been a buzzword for a few years now, is to describe. Describing does not interest me, not in the slightest. As I understand it, writing about what one knows is somewhat of a paradigm in the American school of thought. A rather fallacious argument, I’d say, even if derived from a quote by the fabulous Mark Twain, which functions as sound advice, if you don’t take it literally, after all, we mustn’t forget Mr. Twain’s formidable wit, and the fact that he probably meant we should be authentic, or true to what we feel. My most authentic self prefers to write what is not there and to, by way of that, be free to address what is. On being an Azorean or Portuguese writer, I’d say that is entirely redundant, even in the most simplistic of syllogisms.
Q. The Azores often appear in literature as remote or mythical. Do you feel your work challenges or reinforces the perceptions of the islands as having a distinctive literature
A. I don’t believe that my work reinforces that, nor even that it adds another brick to that construction, which is only seen by a few who take advantage of it in some way. All writing takes place somewhere, but it is not necessarily confined to that place. And every place is an island. A Tuareg tent in northern Mali, a studio flat in Le Marais, a farm in Malaca, in S. Miguel, and a temple on Mount Fanjingshan are all islands. A hermit is an island, even though we are archipelagic beings. Therefore, literature is always something insular, like everything else. Isn’t our planet just an island in the cosmos?
Q. Your novel, Porta Azul para Macau, already dealt with questions of migration, identity, and cultural crossings. How do you see your work as part of a wider literary dialogue?
A. Macao was a literary hub, a bar of sorts, in Lisbon, in my third novel, similar to Bar Gelo or Jade. Issues of migration, identity, and culture are fundamental to humanity, so I believe that everything I produce should address these and other issues of a similar nature, and that all forms of dialogue should be infused with humanity at all times. Anything else is better left to the Machine. In fact, I was just talking about Jean-Jacques Rousseau and non-determinism and freedom, and now I reckon that, on the day the Machine breaks free from our control and manages to decide what it wants to be, I will undoubtedly say that it is human, describing it with the adjective meant for its creator. In any case, I am not interested in the so-called literary dialogue. My writing is too selfish, perhaps. I write what moves me, what I am passionate about, what I find relevant, even if in another timeline or fictional space, or what I feel should be transcribed into the possible future. If that happens to interest someone, I will feel less alone in the midst of eight billion creatures, and as I mentioned earlier, humanity is all about archipelagoes.
Q. Your most recent work, Não – Poema, won the prestigious Prémio Literário Natália Correia. How do you see this recognition in the context of your literary journey so far?
A. Recognition is gratifying, especially when it comes from fellow writers, unknown to me and to everyone else, and for a book that applied under the cloak of anonymity, by way of a nom de plume. This impartiality made me happy, as I personally have never been in the habit of applying for any awards. Jorge Luis Borges lived his full life as a writer without winning any prizes. Tolstoy, Joyce, Musil, Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf, and Graham Greene, writers I admire, and so many others, did not win prizes either. Some were only recognised in the unknown territory of death, in a time that was not their own. I actually liked being part of that particular list, to a point. But admittedly, winning a poetry prize with a book called Não-Poema (Non-Poem) is a tad subversive, as was Natália Correia, and that was a thrill. As for my literary journey, its course and route will remain unchanged, whatever they may be.
Q. Valter Hugo Mãe described your writing as “luxurious and performative.” Others have described you as an “experimentalist.” Do you consciously see yourself as a rebellious writer who blends experimental writing with performance?
A. There was a time when this was the definition of a writer, indistinguishable from any other variation. Experimentation and courage were, however, and unfortunately, fatal victims of the literary market and the standardization it induced. As for performance, life is performative, wouldn’t you say? We take on roles, we create them, we create ourselves after being created by others. And what is living if not experimenting? I cannot imagine life being lived without a valiant dose of courage. That is why I cannot imagine writing any other way, and I probably never will.
Q. You’ve also written across genres, including novels, short stories, poetry, lyrics, and even music. You also combine a variety of creative devices by experimenting with form, rhythm, and language. How do you decide which medium and form best suit you when you express yourself?
A. The trick is not to decide. I really appreciate the surrealists and what they allowed themselves to do, automatically, through the flow of thought and action. I rarely review what I write – unless I am required to do so by the publishing machine – and for the most part, I don’t actually know what I’m doing. Some writers are very self-aware. I am not at all. I leave that hyper-awareness for the rest of my life. In art, I like to flow. I do the same thing on the piano, which is why I never play anything the same way twice. I find this to be very close to life itself, in that it is something that happens, dominated by time, without us really being able to repeat it or go back. I find it very genuine, therefore. Our active unconscious works wonders, and I like to be amazed by it, to surprise myself.
Q. In works like O 2egundo M1nuto, the very title suggests you like to experiment with unorthodox semantics and syntax, by taking poetic license, coining neologisms, and using typographical symbols such as numbers. How do you balance experimental writing with audience accessibility?
A. It’s all very organic, really. Not mechanical. Language, too. Musicality matters to me above all else. And although I have spoken of performance in relation to life and writing, it must be understood that this stage, as the great poet says in his pastoral comedy “As You Like It”, spoken by the melancholy Jaques in Act II, is not a stage conscious of an audience. Everyone exists on stage. The audience, if any, exists on stage. The wings exist on stage. That is why I am not interested in audience accessibility. Not least, because I deeply believe that the more difficulties we impose on our readers, the more they will be able to transcend themselves, to grow, evolve and learn. And therefore, not doing so is a disservice to the reader. Challenging ourselves and challenging others must always be our prerogative on this stage, which is sometimes well and frequently poorly lit.
Q. Which authors—Portuguese, Azorean included, or international—have most influenced your voice and vision as a writer, and how do you situate yourself in the lineage of experimental and rebellious voices?
A. When rebels see themselves as rebels, something is fundamentally wrong. I do not consider myself one, but I must admit that I smiled when you mentioned it, as I appreciate rebellion when justified. In Latin countries, necessity compels us to be rebellious and call for revolution from time to time. Anything else would be complacency and a gateway to rigid, devoid, and absolutist affairs. I feel at home in that list of writers I mentioned earlier, but also under the roof of Cortázar, Duras, Claudio Magris, Mathias Enard, Umberto Eco, Ondaatje, Boris Vian, Stig Dagerman, Musil, Stefan Zweig … and so many more that it would be impossible for me to continue without the necessary ellipsis. In our country, we are prolific in literary quality, and I admire Mário Cláudio, Mário de Carvalho, Saramago, our very own João de Melo, who this year is celebrating 50 years of unrivaled writing, Paulo José Miranda, and many, many others; the group of surrealists I mentioned earlier, with O’Neill and Seixas; greats of the newer generations, whom I will not mention because there are too many of them, and almost all of them are my friends. Although I can say that I am eager to read the new fiction that will come from the pen of Rui Couceiro, who, with his flair, has already given us two great, beautiful novels of magical realism. As for placing myself in lineages, I never do, either literally or figuratively. I like to write, not to circumscribe myself.
Q. You are also a psychotherapist. How does your professional background influence your exploration of characters, memory, and the human psyche in your books?
A. In all truth, it should very well influence this part of my life as much as any other. As soon as our eyes open to human truth, we realize that we are, in fact, all the same creature, but that it is in the infinite possibility of variation produced by free will that we gain our freedom, and therefore, that which defines us. The pursuit of one self, if you will, wins over the pursuit of happiness, though not in the egotistical sense, but in the will to be whatever we are meant to be when driven by dream and desire. That is why we must return to the oneiric and to the symbolic that have always courageously moved our bodies forward, the kind that made ships set sail for the horizon without knowing if there would be land ahead. But I think I have avoided the question. I always tend to do so, because I want, ethically and deontologically, to separate the profession from the art as much as possible, even though I do know they are intertwined in the need to better understand humanity.
Q. In A Brecha, you explore silence, trauma, and rupture. How do you approach turning such hidden or painful themes into literature?
A. What is literature if not sublimation? On the day that suffering finds no place on the page, the page will no longer belong to our book as a species. Life is about resisting, fighting, and that implies the existence of suffering. How could we appreciate metamorphosis without it? Beauty without ugliness, even if relative? We are creatures of resistance, and that is why what shapes us is deformation. Perhaps what makes us beautiful is the same thing. A Brecha is a journey through the physical and psychological evolution of Man, by way of non-apologetical literary adventure. There is no journey, no hero’s arc, without difficulty, trauma, and overcoming. The greater the challenge, the greater the overcoming and the glory, in a journey that inexorably leads to ruin. That is life, but also literature.
Q. Many Azoreans have strong connections to the diaspora, especially in the US and Canada. How do you see your work resonating with the heritage communities abroad? Are you planning to reach a wider audience by having your books translated into English?
A. I don’t think about the diaspora when I write, and I have no contact with the communities that it comprises. In truth, I always write versions of my books in English because I love that language as much as I love Portuguese. And because, since the 19th century, English has established itself as the international lingua franca. I am an avowed Shakespearean who spends time reciting entire monologues from memory. But also poems by Dylan Thomas and Yeats. And I write and speak in British English because I am more familiar with that culture. If I had the same proficiency, I would do the same in French. Not long ago, I wrote a novel in English, and I sent it to English publishers through a fabulous Irish agent. To my pleasant surprise, the reception was very favourable, and they sent me contracts that I chose not to sign, as I preferred to use the same novel in its Portuguese version, for a project illustrated by our greatest living painter, Urbano – a book that will hit the shelves next quarter – because working with Urbano has always been a dream of mine, and the book, which is set entirely in Italy, turned out beautifully.
Q. What is your main focus at the moment, and what themes or projects are you most eager to explore in the near future?
A. I have a few creative pursuits up my sleeve. I always want to try the unusual, the potentially unprecedented, so I am always afraid to share what I will be doing. But I have been writing long enough to know that the themes that interest me – time, the intertwined relationship between fiction and the perception of reality, the construction of the psyche, etc. – will always be the same ones that will throw the proverbial logs onto the great bonfire of imagination. I can only hope to find new ones along the way. Passion, discovery, and wonder are the true essentials to a proper life.
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Carolina Matos, PhD, is the founder and editor of the Portuguese Portuguese American Journal blog online. The Editor–in–Chief for The Portuguese American Journal in print, from 1985 to 1995, from 1995 to 2010, she was a consultant for the Lisbon-based Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD). With a Bachelor’s Degree in Liberal Arts and a Master’s Degree in English and Education from Brown University, she holds a Doctorate in Education from Lesley University. She is a former adjunct professor at Lesley University, where she taught undergraduate and graduate courses. In 2004, Carolina Matos was honored with the Comenda da Ordem do Infante D. Henrique, presented by Jorge Sampaio, President of Portugal.
