John P.Portelli

He is a Professor in the Department of Social Justice Education, and in the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education at the University of Toronto. Aside from various other teaching engagements, he continues to serve as an education consultant at the University of Malta, and remains a versatile and in-demand public speaker and project coordinator in the fields of youth and adult education, and social justice.

When it comes to literary writing, Portelli’s first stirrings for the craft began to emerge during his time as an undergraduate student in Malta during the early 1970s, starting with poetry. While in Malta, Portelli was an active member of all of the island’s literary groups and associations, including Moviment Qawmien Letterarju (he was its youngest member at age 16), Għaqda Letterarja Maltija, Għaqda Kittieba Żgħażagħ, and Għaqda tal-Malti - Università – serving as secretary for the latter for some time.

Publication would finally come much later, however, with the release of the bilingual collection Bejn Żewġ Dinjiet/In Between (Melita Books) in Toronto in 2001. Two of his subsequent collections would also be published as bilingual editions, cementing Portelli’s position as an author caught between two countries and languages. He has also branched into prose more recently, releasing a novel and two short story collections in as many years, followed by a ‘Maltese only’ poetry collection – Imkien għall-Kenn (Horizons) – in 2020. Portelli characterises his prose writing as a form of activism, dealing as it does with recurring themes of critical existentialism, anti-colonialism, and perspectives on social justice and equity, with the migrant experience also emerging to the fore in many of his works.

The bilingual nature of the bulk of his published work is bolstered even further in reach by dint of the many translations of his work. Two of his poetry collections have been translated in French and Greek, with the English translation of Portelli’s short story collection, Everyday Encounters (Word and Deed Publishing), appearing in 2019. Other standalone works of his were translated in Italian, Arabic, Romanian, Portuguese, and Nepali.

Meanwhile, Portelli has co-edited 11 academic books, and published over a hundred articles. While he is impressed by the sheer amount of literary publications to emerge from Malta ever since he has begun publishing, Portelli is less enthusiastic about the apparent lack of a critical infrastructure for Maltese publishing.