he/him

Assistant Professor

English

Who, then, will write the history of the bottom, the history of the moss? —Mahmoud Darwish, Memory for Forgetfulness

How do you write a history that is both [yours] and [not yours] but an extension of an improbable future? —Muriel Leung, Imagine Us, the Swarm

 

I am a yonsei (4th-gen Japanese American) poet, writer, and teacher of writing. I have taught writing to students of all ages, from elementary school students just beginning to discover the pleasure and the power of transforming their experiences—their joys, dreams, fears, curiosities—into stories, to elders considering the extent of their lives and hoping to make for themselves and their descendants an inhabitable panorama of them. I have taught at the University of Arizona, the UA Poetry Center, Kaohsiung American School (Taiwan), the University of Montana, Occidental College, Pacific Northwest College of the Arts/Willamette University, and Pima Community College/Upward Bound. All of my classes incorporate, in some form: memory studies, ancestral studies, and creative research methodologies. I generally teach what I, as a writer, am thinking about/trying to figure out in my own writing.

Among the writers/artists whose work I have shared most recently with my students: Etel Adnan, Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi, James Baldwin, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Victoria Chang, Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis, Raquel Gutiérrez, Kiku Hughes, Bhanu Kapil, traci kato-kiriyama, Janice Lee, Rajiv Mohabir, Carol Nguyen, Emiko Omori, Eiko Otake, Natanya Pulley, Alison C. Rollins, Sei Shōnagon, Kimiko Tanabe, Divya Victor, Alice Walker, Jane Wong. 

I am the author of eight books of poetry and/or prose. I am currently writing a book of nonfiction (to be published by City Lights, late 2024) on the afterlife of Japanese American incarceration. Chapter, passages, early drafts, and notes of that book have been published in/at Densho, Hyperallergic, Jewish Currents, Literary Hub, The Nation, and Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center

Books

Hydra Medusa (Nightboat Books, 2023)

The Grave on the Wall (City Lights, 2019). Winner of the PEN Open Book Award.

The Desert (The Song Cave, 2018)

Evening Oracle (Letter Machine Editions, 2015). Winner of the William Carlos Williams Award.

To look at the sea is to become what one is: An Etel Adnan Reader, co-editor (Nightboat Books, 2014)

Portuguese (Octopus Books/Tin House Books, 2013)

O Bon (Litmus Press, 2011)

The Girl Without Arms (Black Ocean, 2011)

The Alps (Flim Forum Press, 2008) 

The Inland Sea (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2008)

Courses

Beginning Creative Nonfiction Writing

Advanced Creative Nonfiction Writing

Introduction to Creative Writing (Multigenre)

Correspondences: Epistolary Reading & Writing

Literature of Japanese American Incarceration