Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Kurodahan: Selling to a Niche
Ginny Tapley interviews Edward Lipsett, Kyushu-based translator and editor who has spearheaded the founding and development of Kurodahan Press, specializing in genre fiction translated from Japanese. This article brings SWET Newsletter readers up to date on this ambitious project.
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Young Adult Fantasy in Translation
SWET member Cathy Hirano is a Japanese-English translator living in Shikoku. Her translation of the young adult (YA) novel The Friends by Kazumi Yumoto (Natsu no niwa; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996) won the Mildred L. Batchelder Award for children’s literature in translation and the Boston Globe–Horn Book award for children’s fiction (both in 1997). Misa Dikengil interviewed Hirano via email about two recent YA publications: a translation of Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit by Nahoko Uehashi (Seirei no moribito; Scholastic, 2008) and a revised reissue of her 1993 translation of Dragon Sword and Wind Child by Noriko Ogiwara (Sorairo magatama; VIZ Media, 2007). Shortly after the interview, Hirano’s translation of Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit received the 2009 Mildred L. Batchelder Award for Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Japan Image Use Conference
SWET and Other Events
Japan Image Use Conference
By Lynne E. Riggs
On June 23, 2008, the North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources held a symposium in Tokyo (International House of Japan) entitled “Japanese Images: Using Them to Support Japan Studies Internationally.” Bringing together librarians, publishers, museum staff, editors, Japanese studies professors, and other interested parties, it was a landmark event in developing good practices for image use relating to Japan. Lynne E. Riggs is the managing editor of Monumenta Nipponica, the now semi-annual journal of Japanese studies.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
On Wakame and Bicultural Fiction for Children
SWET core member and regional advisor of the Tokyo chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), Holly Thompson has lived in the Kamakura-Yokohama area since 1998 and teaches poetry and fiction writing at Yokohama City University. She is the author of the novel Ash (Stone Bridge Press, 2001) and recently made her debut as a picture book author with The Wakame Gatherers (Shen’s Books, 2007), the story of a bicultural girl who gathers wakame with her Japanese and American grandmothers. In this interview, Thompson shares some of her experiences writing and marketing The Wakame Gatherers, a rare example of bicultural fiction for children set in Japan.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Writing and Publishing Fiction
Australian author of A Much Younger Man and In the Empire of Dreams Dianne Highbridge spoke to SWET on September 14, 2007 about writing, finding an agent, being reviewed and other topics. Her successful Creative Writing classes at Temple University Japan led to a series of annual writing workshops (last held in October- November 2007). She has just completed a third novel, The Book Lover.