October 16, 2014/ 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

UCLA Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM) Portola Plaza Room 1200

The latest words from today's Japan

Readings, Discussions, and Q&A

Monkey Business is a Tokyo- and Brooklyn-based annual literary journal which showcases the best of contemporary Japanese fiction and poetry newly translated into English, and provides a literary space where new voices from both sides of the Pacific meet.

Three award-winning Japanese authors will discuss their writing, contemporary Japanese culture, and what it feels like to live in post-disaster Japan. They will be joined by Roland Kelts, author of Japanamerica, and founding editor of Monkey Business and University of Tokyo scholar Motoyuki Shibata.

Steve Erickson has written for Esquire, Rolling Stone, Smithsonian, Bookforum and the New York Times Magazine among others, and currently is film critic for Los Angeles magazine; he also is editor of the literary journal Black Clock and teaches writing at the University of California, Riverside. He has received the American Academy of Arts and Letters award in literature.

Hideo Furukawa is one of the most active writers in Japan today: besides his prolific literary output, he gives numerous bilingual readings and frequently collaborates with artists and dancers.

Hiromi Itoh is a poet, novelist, essayist, and translator, and one of the most important female voices to come out in Japanese poetry of the late twentieth century. She is author of numerous books, including La Niña (1999), Supernatural Stories from Japan (2004), and Wild Grass on a Riverbank (2005). She is recipient of numerous awards, including the Hagiwara Sakutaro Award and Murasaki Shikibu Literary Award.

Roland Kelts is the author of the critically acclaimed and best-selling Japanamerica (2007), and his articles, essays and stories are published in The New Yorker, Time, Zoetrope: All Story, The Village Voice, The Wall Street Journal, A Public Space, Newsweek Japan, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, The Yomiuri and The Japan Times among others. He is also a regular contributor to CNN, BBC, NPR and NHK. He is a visiting scholar at Keio University and contributing editor to Monkey Business.

Tomoka Shibasaki is known for novels and stories that capture the sensibilities of young women living in cities. Winner of the Oda Sakunosuke Prize and the Noma New Writers’ Award among others, she is also the recipient of the 2014 Akutagawa Prize, the most prestigious literary award in Japan.

Motoyuki Shibata is a professor at the University of Tokyo and the founder of the literary magazine Monkey Business. A translator, reviewer, and essayist, he has translated into Japanese the works of contemporary American authors including Thomas Pynchon, Paul Auster, Steve Erickson, Steven Millhauser, among others. He received the 1992 Kodansha Essay Award for his book The Half-Hearted Scholar and was the winner of the 27th Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities for American Narushisu ("American Narcissus").

Free and open to the public!

Download file: Flyer-p0-3vq.pdf

Sponsor(s): Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies, Asian Languages & Cultures, Japan Foundation, Nippon Foundation