25 May 2016 | 7:00 p.m. | Room 309, Metro Hall, 55 John Street
Asian Canadian Authors’ Panel
An evening with famous Asian Canadian authors to explore the Japanese Canadian experience in Literature
Introduction: Jim Wong Chu
Moderator: Professor Ted Goossen (Humanities, York University)
Panelists: Lynne Kutsukake, Terry Watada, Kerri Sakamoto, and Leslie Shimotakahara
Watch the videos of the panel presentation | Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII
Participant Bios
Jim Wong Chu, a published poet, author, editor and historian, is well-known as a co-founder of the Asian Canadian Writers Workshop, Ricepaper Magazine, Pender Guy Radio Program, Asia Canadian Performing Arts Resource (ACPAR), literASIAN: A Festival of Pacific Rim Asian Canadian Writing, and the Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Festival. He has also co-edited several anthologies of Asian Canadian writers.
Lynne Kutsukake‘s debut novel, The Translation of Love, an emotionally gripping portrait of post-war Japan, where a newly repatriated girl must help a classmate find her missing sister. It is published by Penguin Random House Canada.
Terry Watada has written in all genres including fiction (Daruma Days: A Collection of Fictionalised Biography; Kuroshio: The Blood of Foxes), poetry (A Thousand Homes; Ten Thousand Views of Rain; Obon: The Festival of the Dead; The Game of 100 Ghosts) and edited Collected Voices: An Anthology of Asian North American Periodical Writing anthology.
Kerri Sakamoto‘s debut novel, The Electrical Field (1998), won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book. It also won the Canada-Japan Literary Award and was a finalist for a Governor General’s Award. Her second novel, One Hundred Million Hearts, was published in 2003. Both books have been published in translation internationally.
Leslie Shimotakahara is the author of The Reading List: Literature, Love and Back Again, a memoir (Variety Crossing Press) and the winner of the 2012 Canada-Japan Literary Award.
The panel was followed by the launch of the video, Our Land of Canada: Diversity and Peace, presented by Lien Chao and Ashley Poy
This is a poetic, conceptual, installation art/performance on the stage involving multi-media devices of video, sound, music, poetry, art, Taichi, meditation and potential audience participation. Written and produced by Moon Pointer Productions Inc.; performed by the following artists: painter/calligrapher/Taichi brushwork artist Henry Ho, poet Lien Chao, meditative artist Ashley Poy, and painter/musician Brian Lau.
Co-Organizers: Asian Heritage Month—Canadian Foundation for Asian Culture (Central Ontario) Inc.; Justin Poy Agency; Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library, University of Toronto; Richard Charles Lee Canada-Hong Kong Library, University of Toronto; Chinese Canadian Photography Society of Toronto; WE Artists’ Group; literASIAN; Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre; Toronto Public Library; York Centre for Asian Research, York University; Social Services Network
Asian Heritage Month Festival is partially funded by the Government of Canada through the Departments of Canadian Heritage, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council