Kaitlin Stainbrook (author, “Signs”) is a recent graduate of Beloit College where she received a BA in creative writing and currently edits the Beloit Fiction Journal. She spent a semester abroad at Kansai Gaikoku Daigaku during her junior year and is now working on her first novel. www.disdainbrook.blogspot.com
David Sulz (translator, “Be Not Defeated by the Rain”) is a librarian at the University of Alberta. He spent four years in the nineties in the JET program in Miyagi (Sendai and Towa-cho) and tries to return often to visit the kindred spirits there, who remain among his closest friends. Other translations include Jiro Nitta’s Phantom Immigrants (Mikkosen suian maru), Kenji Miyazawa’s The Poison Powder Police Chief, and lyrics from Miyagi friends’ CDs.
Fumio Takano (author, “Anton and Kiyohime”) is best known for works of alternative history with a science fiction twist. Her debut novel, Mujika makiina (Musica Machina), was selected as one of Japan’s thirty best works of science fiction from the 1990s. Her latest project is compiling Jikan wa dare mo matte kurenai (Time Waits for No Man), an anthology of Eastern European science fiction and fantastica from the first decade of the twenty-first century that brings together twelve stories from ten countries, each translated directly into Japanese from its original language. homepage3.nifty.com/takanosite/indexEnglish.htm.
Holly Thompson (editor, Foreword) earned an MA from the NYU Creative Writing Program and is the author of the novels Orchards and Ash and the picture book The Wakame Gatherers, all set in Japan. A longtime resident of Japan, she teaches creative and academic writing at Yokohama City University and is regional advisor of the Tokyo chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. www.hatbooks.com
Wendy Nelson Tokunaga (author, “Love Right on the Yesterday”) lived in Tokyo in the early 1980s. She earned her MFA at the University of San Francisco and is the author of two Japan-themed novels, Love in Translation and Midori by Moonlight, and the nonfiction e-book Marriage in Translation: Foreign Wife, Japanese Husband. She lives in San Francisco with her Osaka-born husband. www.WendyTokunaga.com
Catherine Rose Torres (author, “A Song for Benzaiten”) is a Filipino diplomat and writer based in Singapore. She is a Palanca awardee for fiction, and her works have appeared in Ceriph, TAYO Literary Magazine, and The Philippines Graphic. She takes part in Write Forward, an online writing course by Birbeck College Writing Programme and British Council Singapore. She stayed in Japan during a cultural exchange sponsored by JAL in 1999 and was an exchange student at the University of Tokyo from 2000 to 2001.
Tak Toyoshima (author-illustrator, “Kazoku”) is the writer and illustrator of the comic strip Secret Asian Man. Since 1999, Secret Asian Man has been tackling issues of race with raw honesty, seeking to bring people together to work out these problems. Tak speaks at universities about his experiences and the importance of keeping tuned in to mainstream depictions and stereotypes of Asians in America. Raised in New York City, he now lives in Massachusetts. www.secretasianman.com
Avery Fischer Udagawa (translator, “House of Trust”) grew up in Kansas and lives with her bicultural (Japanese-American) family near Bangkok. Her translations from Japanese include the middle-grade novel J-Boys: Kazuo’s World, Tokyo, 1965 by Shogo Oketani. Her writing has appeared in Kyoto Journal and Literary Mama. www.averyfischerudagawa.com
Acknowledgments
This anthology was a labor of love by many individuals on behalf of teens in the Tohoku region of Japan affected by the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami. I am grateful to the authors for donating their stories, which together have created this rich collection of Japan-related tales. I wish to thank all of the translators for their incredible efforts under extremely tight deadlines, particularly Sako Ikegami and Avery Fischer Udagawa, who played key roles in seeking out Japanese-language authors, connecting them with translators, and ensuring that Tomo would include works originally written in Japanese. So many individuals have contributed along the way to Tomo’s success, including my agent Jamie Weiss Chilton; members of the Tokyo chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators; members of the Society of Writers, Editors and Translators—especially Lynne E. Riggs; John Shelley, who donated illustrations for the cover and interior; Debbie Ridpath Ohi, who designed the Tomo launch graphic; David Sulz, who contributed his poem translation for the epigraph; as well as myriad friends and colleagues. I also wish to thank my ever-supportive family members for encouraging me through many months of this project. Publisher Peter Goodman of Stone Bridge Press has championed this anthology wholeheartedly from the moment I first mentioned my idea, and to him and the entire Stone Bridge Press team, I am deeply grateful.
h.t.
The Tomo Blog
For interviews with contributors to this book including cultural information relating to the stories, and for updates regarding the donations of funds raised through sales of Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction—An Anthology of Japan Teen Stories, please visit the Tomo Blog:
tomoanthology.blogspot.com
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