My novel Kanazawa has just been listed as a 2022 Indies Finalist for best multicultural novel by Foreword Reviews. Honored and happy about this, and hoping for even better news when winners are announced in June!
Peter Goodman, my publisher at Stone Bridge Press, kindly interviewed me about my novels Kanazawa (2022) and The Heron Catchers (forthcoming) and what it's like to be a writer in Japan. It's barely 20 minutes long, so have a listen if you've got the time!
The Japan Times recently published an article about books in Japan to look out for in 2023 and mentioned my novel The Heron Catchers, which will come out with Stone Bridge Press late this year. The story is set in Kanazawa and Yamanaka Onsen, so please look out for it! 😀
For those of you who might be interested, the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan has uploaded my December 1st presentation and Q&A onto YouTube. The sound quality isn't always the best (lesson learned: sit closer to the mic!), but my voice is audible throughout. If you watch it, I hope you enjoy it.
I’ve had a busy, very rewarding couple of days in Tokyo. On Thursday evening I gave a talk at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, which was moderated by the venerable Robert Whiting. The talk was about my novel Kanazawa; I discussed local cultural elements I incorporated into it, especially the works and biography of Kanazawa-born writer Izumi Kyōka. At the end of the evening, I was presented with a one-year honorary membership to the FCCJ. I guess I’ll need to find my way back to Tokyo often so I can use it!
This afternoon I also had the good fortune of meeting the author Hirano Keiichiro, who has a number of award-winning novels to his name – including A Man and At the End of the Matinee – and seems to be getting his novels turned into movies on a regular basis. I was struck by his kindness and humility, and wish we could have spoken to one another longer than the two hours we actually had together. I’m extremely grateful to my friend, the Japanese literary scholar and Tanizaki translator, Anthony Chambers, for introducing us.
Following that, I went to Books Kinokuniya Tokyo to sign copies of Kanazawa and have my photograph taken in the store. I greatly enjoyed talking to the staff there, who were so friendly and helpful – again, I wish I could have spent more time with them – and I was more than happy to buy nearly ¥30,000 worth of books before I left, which I hope made them happy in turn…
And even before my Tokyo trip, I was lucky enough to meet Beth Kempton, author of Wabi-Sabi and The Way of the Fearless Writer, who was in Kanazawa to research her next book, Kokoro. Although I left feeling as if I’d talked too much in our limited time together at a café, I felt I learned a lot from her, and I just really appreciated the connection with her that our meeting allowed.
Shepherd.com is a new website for readers and authors. I was asked to contribute a selection of favorite books under a theme of my choice, and I (naturally) went with “The Best Novels with Japanese Settings Not Named Tokyo or Kyoto.” As I prefer 20th-century classics from the Japanese canon, it’s probably no surprise that I picked the following:
1) TEMPLE OF WILD GEESE AND BAMBOO DOLLS OF ECHIZEN, by Tsutomu Minakami
2) SNOW COUNTRY, by Yasunari Kawabata
3) THE MAKIOKA SISTERS, by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki
4) THE WOMAN IN THE DUNES, by Kobo Abe
5) THE GARDEN OF EVENING MISTS, by Tan Twan Eng
To read my reasons for selecting these five novels, please visit my Shepherd page here:
https://shepherd.com/best-books/japanese-settings-not-named-tokyo-or-kyoto
“Kanazawa produces with words a similar effect to wandering around an old city; even if it’s unfamiliar territory, the texture of the textual space that Joiner has created thrums with this history as the plot slowly and deliberately unfolds.”
—REID BARTHOLOMEW
Another positive review of Kanazawa, this time in World Literature Today. I wasn't expecting it, but I'm always grateful for unexpected, positive reviews!
I've lately become fascinated by haiku and over the last several months have written probably 200 of them. Today I got my first three haiku published in the literary journal Whisky Blot. In the coming weeks my haiku will appear among 21 other poems for Whisky Blot's summer poetry issue "Twenty-One Shots of Summer." I don't consider these my best haiku by any means, but they fit the issue's summer theme and I'm glad they could use them! If you’d like to read them, I’ll upload a screenshot from the Whisky Blot website. The original post can also be seen here: https://www.whiskyblot.com/journal/three-haiku-by-david-joiner
