Vitorino Nemésio Mendes Pinheiro da Silva (19 December 1901 – 20 February 1978) was a Portuguese poet, author and intellectual from Terceira, Azores, best known for his novel Mau Tempo No Canal (literally, Bad Weather in the Channel but published in an English translation as Stormy Isles – An Azorean Tale), as well as a professor in the Faculty of Letters at the University of Lisbon and member of the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon.

He was influenced by friend, Jaime Brasil, lawyer Luís da Silva Ribeiro, and author and librarian Gervásio Lima.

In Lisbon, Nemésio worked as a coordinator for A Pátria, A Imprensa de Lisboa and Última Hora, while completing his secondary school studies in Coimbra (starting in 1921).

During his first trip to Spain with the Academic Choir in 1923, he met Spanish writer, philosopher, and republican Miguel Unamuno, with whom he would correspond for years.

With Afonso Duarte, António de Sousa, Branquinho da Fonseca, Gaspar Simões, among others, he founded the magazine Tríptico.

In 1934, he received his Doctorate in Letters from the University of Lisbon with his thesis A Mocidade de Herculano Até à Volta do Exílio (transl.

Set in the islands of Faial, Pico, São Jorge and Terceira, the novel evokes the period of 1917–1919 when the author lived in Horta, and features people such as Dr. José Machado de Serpa (a Republican senator), Father Nunes da Rosa (professor at the secondary school) and Osório Goulart (poet), met by the writer at that time.

In an unpublished epilogue, under the title Morro autor de um romance único (English: I will die as the author of a single novel), he stated that Mau Tempo No Canal was the high-point in his long literary career.

Afonso Lopes Vireira would later note the presence of "childhood memories, and loves, pains and figures of humility, who in these pages, are alive and obsessed with the sea".

Vitorino Nemésio's personal experiences are generally present in his published works, beginning with his volume of stories in Paço do Milhafre, in 1924.

Óscar Lopes, writing on his poetry, noted two currents of verse in his work Nem toda a Noite a Vida (English: Not All Night Is There Life).

The first current is mostly regional; in particular, nostalgia for island life, childhood, adolescence, his father and first forbidden love, which are obvious in O Bicho Harmonioso (English: The Harmonious Beast) and Eu, Comovido a Oeste.