Interviews, Essays & Press
The archipelago within me - Essay
By Darrell Kastin
I was fifteen years old, a scrawny kid born and raised in Los Angeles, California, when I saw the Azores for the first time.
I arrived on Santa Maria in 1972. An old friend of the family drove us around the island. My first impression was where in the world am I? I felt as though I’d slipped back one hundred years in time, and into a landscape different from anything I’d ever seen before.
Darrell Kastin's mystical world of fantasy and intrique - Interview
By Millicent Accardi, Contributor
Published in the Portuguese American Journal October 5, 2013
Born in Los Angeles, Darrell Kastin grew up in Southern California. Like twisted aces, the writer Kastin’s family radiates in two directions, with his father’s heritage in Russia and his mother’s ancestry emanating from The Azores. He currently lives in Sacramento with his lovely wife Elisabeth.
Through the years, the author has spent much time in the Azores, even living there for an extended period; often he evokes and employs the islands as a fictional setting.
Darrell Kastin: His allure of the Azores and his work in progress - Interview
By Carolina Matos, Editor
Published in the Portuguese American Journal July 5, 2012
Darrell Kastin was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1957, of Azorean and Russian-Jewish descent. His maternal ancestors came from the islands to settle in the United States at the end of World War II.
Kastin was captivated by the Azores at a family reunion on the islands in1972. Since then, he has spent considerable time visiting the various islands and has used their lore and history, their culture and mythology, to write his novels and short stories.
Beauty of the Azores inspires collection of short stories - Press
By Melissa Costa
Published in Community News, Original Content on December 14, 2012
DARTMOUTH — Inspired by the beauty and magic of the Azorean archipelago, Darrell Kastin, son of an Azorean mother, wrote a collection of stories depicting the islands as he knows them, feels them, and experienced them.
“The Conjurer and Other Azorean Tales” is mostly set on the Azores, with the exception of two stories, which are set in Massachusetts and California.
The book was recently published by Tagus Press at UMass Dartmouth.
“They are mostly set in the timeframe of the 1970s and the 1980s, when I first got to know the islands, although some are in a sort of timeless setting,” stated Kastin, who lived in Faial and Pico in 1987 and 1988. “These stories cover the lives of a range of characters, some young, some old, some in between, some rich and some poor.”
Kastin was mostly writing poetry when, all of a sudden, he had an idea for a story. While driving around Faial, stopping here and there along the way, he discovered many beaches, some of which, according to him, were very difficult to get to. They were “isolated, with no roads to access them.”