Campus Directory

Brandon Shimoda

Sabbatical, Spring 2025

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 biracial yonsei (4th-gen Japanese American) poet and writer. I have taught writing to students of all ages, from elementary school students just beginning to discover the pleasure and 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, panoramic record. 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.

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: James Baldwin, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Victoria Chang, Danielle Geller, Raquel Gutiérrez, Kimiko Hahn, Kiku Hughes, Bhanu Kapil, Elias Khoury, Jamaica Kincaid, Maxine Hong Kingston, traci kato-kiriyama, Janice Lee, Mohammad Malas, Jami Nakamura Lin, Carol Nguyen, Emiko Omori, Sei Shōnagon, Agnès Varda.

I am the author of several books of poetry and/or prose. My next book, The Afterlife Is Letting Go, is a book of nonfiction on the afterlife of Japanese American incarceration, which includes stories about some of my family members who were incarcerated. Chapters, passages, early drafts have been published in/at Densho, Hyperallergic, Literary Hub, The Nation, and Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. I am also working on a new book of poetry (Rest House; excerpts in/at the Academy of American Poets, Annulet, Poetry) and co-editing, with Brynn Saito, an anthology of poetry on Nikkei (Japanese - Okinawan - American - Canadian) incarceration (forthcoming from Haymarket Books, 2025). Visit my Linktree here.