Anthony De Sa

Anthony De Sa is an acclaimed Canadian novelist and short-story writer whose deeply resonant fiction powerfully explores the immigrant experience and the multi-generational dynamics of Toronto's Portuguese community. The son of Azorean immigrants who arrived in Canada in 1956, he was born and raised in Toronto, graduating from the University of Toronto and Queen's University before honing his craft at the Humber School for Writers. He vaulted to national literary prominence with his 2008 debut, Barnacle Love, a stunning collection of intimately linked short stories following a father and son navigating identity, tradition, and displacement between the Azores, Newfoundland, and Toronto. The book achieved immense critical success, earning nominations as a shortlisted finalist for both the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Toronto Book Award. De Sa expanded his literary footprint with his 2013 debut novel, Kicking the Sky, which revisits characters from Barnacle Love against the dark backdrop of Toronto's real-life 1977 Emanuel Jaques tragedy. He further solidified his status as a vital contemporary voice with his critically praised 2019 novel, Children of the Moon, a historical saga set during the tumultuous colonial and civil war eras of Tanzania and Mozambique. He lives in Toronto, where he balances his writing with his career as a high school teacher-librarian.