The Heart & Hustle of Portugal

In this conversation on “The Heart & Hustle of Portugal” podcast, hosted by Tony Gonçalves, the New York-based author Katherine Vaz recalled how her first novel, published by a major New York house, was advised against using the word “saudade” in its title. She insisted, and the word found its readers.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Eugenia Oswaldt left a corporate career to open up Tashca, a modern eatery in Nolita, New York City. She tells Tony Gonçalves the story of how a visa issue led her to change a lucrative career for the hustle of opening up a restaurant.
Eugenia had never imagined herself as an entrepreneur until a visa problem and a flight of the imagination set her on the path to Nolita. The Portuguese-French executive, with years in corporate life across Paris, London and New York, left a tech career to open what was meant to be a Portuguese sandwich shop, a plan that never materialized. The space became something else: a platform for private dining, guest chefs, podcast recordings and a sold-out public night every Thursday, which “only Portuguese soul and New York hustle” could have produced.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nuno Marques, the Portuguese pianist who played Carnegie Hall twice and built a festival from scratch, sits down with Tony Gonçalves to explain why he has spent a career carrying Portugal in his hands. Listen to The Heart & Hustle of Portugal.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Filipe Santos, a Portuguese-American entrepreneur born in Newark, hrecounts a path that began in the tight-knit Portuguese community of his childhood and passed through more than a decade of heroin addiction. Listen to “The Heart & Hustle of Portugal”.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Trained as a translator and interpreter, Rita Barros came to photography almost by accident. It began with a Tom Waits concert, where she took photographs that turned out overexposed but salvageable, and which she ended up selling to a journalist when the singer had banned the press. From there came years of concert photography, developing film in her own kitchen and delivering prints by noon the next day, before she tired of a competitive, largely male environment. Of all the musicians she photographed, she singles out Iggy Pop as the most generous subject. Her work turned to the Chelsea itself, with the book “Chelsea Hotel. 15 Years”, dedicated to her neighbors, followed by self-portraits and self-published handmade books.
Rita Barros also recalls the 11 years she and other long-term tenants fought the hotel's new owners to stay, a battle she won, even if she admits the Chelsea Hotel of today has lost much of its earlier character. She now teaches photography at NYU, where she notes growing student interest in analog film, and keeps close ties to Portugal, with regular stays, exhibitions and books. “I don't have to decide whether I'm one or the other, I'm both”, she says, naming warmth as the defining trait of the Portuguese and recommending, for Lisbon, a beer at a garden kiosk, with nothing to avoid.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.