Poetry

Taya Mikado

Taya Mikado (she/her) is a mixed-race Japanese-Canadian Yonsei hailing from Southern Alberta but currently anchored in Tkaronto. She dabbles in poetry, prose and digital art while working towards becoming an innovative and compassionate lawyer. Losing her father to suicide at 13, and her mother to a motorbike accident at 18, has given Taya significant insight […]

PJ Patten

PJ Patten is a self-taught graphic illustrator, tattoo artist, and poet whose work is influenced by the intersection of his Japanese heritage with his American military upbringing. Patten’s parents met in Japan where his father was stationed, and the family was raised in Huntington Beach, California where he started airbrushing surfboards in the popular surfing […]

Terrie Hamazaki

Terrie Hamazaki (she/her) is a Vancouver based writer who holds a Master of Arts Degree in Creative and Critical Writing (UK). She performed her plays at the Fringe and Women in View Performing Arts Festivals. Her writing has appeared in Swelling with Pride: Queer Conception and Adoption Stories (Caitlin Press), Sustenance (Writers from BC and […]

Laura Fukumoto

Laura Fukumoto grew up on Toronto’s East Lakeshore, but relocated to Vancouver, British Columbia in 2009, where she now works as a costume designer and wardrobe professional, graduating from the University of British Columbia with a BFA in Theatre Production and Design. She has worked with many theatre companies such as The Arts Club and […]

Miyo Ishiwata

Miyo Ishiwata was a Nisei poet whose work appeared frequently in The New Canadian in the late 1930s and 1940s. While many writers contributed poems to The New Canadian, Ishiwata was among the most frequently published, and arguably the most popular: several readers of the paper wrote to praise her work for its sensitivity and […]

Mui-Ling Teh

Mui-Ling Teh is an artist, photographer, and poet of Japanese and Chinese descent. She produces art both traditionally and digitally; but at present she is best known for her miniature origami. Teh’s origami began as photography props, sometimes accompanied by her poetry. In 2014 she transitioned to exhibiting and selling her original creations in public. […]

Sukeo Mokujin Sameshima

Sukeo Mokujin Sameshima was born in 1915 in New Westminster, British Columbia. He went to be educated in Japan in 1921 and returned ten years later after completing junior high school. Although his experiences in Japan determined much of his personal outlook, the prairies, which he calls his ‘second home’, have influenced him deeply. He […]

Soramaru Takayama

In 2007, having received an MA in philosophy, Sora travelled the world for four-and-a-half years writing short poems. In 2008, he joined Austrian artist Bello Benischauer’s ongoing art project doing translation and performance work. His first poetry book, Tsuki To Buranko, was published in 2014 which he took on three successful tours of Japan. He […]

Sachiko Murakami

Sachiko Murakami is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Render (Arsenal Pulp Press 2020), a finalist for the Governor-General’s Literary Award. As a literary worker, she has edited poetry, taught creative writing, worked for trade organizations, hosted reading series, sat on juries, and judged prizes. She lives in Toronto.

Wasteland Gardens

Wasteland Gardens: the Japanese Canadian Internment in Canada is a two-part, one-hour radio documentary about the Japanese Canadian Internment presented on the CBC Radio show, Ideas. Japanese Canadian artists contributing to this documentary, produced by Karen Levine (the award winning playwright and writer of Hana’s Suitcase) were Terry Watada (narrator and script consultant), Takeo Yamashiro […]

Linz Kenyon

Lindsay ‘Linz’ Kenyon is a writer, composer, actor, and musician. He has released four albums, published poems and stories, acted in film, theatre, and radio, and written many plays. Kenyon grew up on a cattle ranch in British Columbia, and has used his wrangling skills in a few theatre productions. He has written, performed, and […]

David Aylward

David Aylward is a literary translator of Japanese poetry who translated the haiku and tanka of Issei and Nisei poets who appeared in paper doors: an anthology of Japanese-Canadian poetry (Coach House, 1981).

Hiromi Goto

Hiromi Goto is a writer and author of Chorus of Mushrooms, The Kappa Child, Hopeful Monsters, for adults, and The Water of Possibility, Half World, and Darkest Light for youth. She co-wrote Wait Until Late Afternoon (poetry) with David Bateman. Showa Shinzan, an NFB animated short directed by Alison Reiko Loader, was co-written with Jesse […]

Helen Koyama

Helen Koyama is a Sansei writer based in Toronto. Her poetry was published in the landmark Asian Canadian anthology Inalienable Rice in 1979, and she also did illustrations for Rikka and Ricepaper magazines. She has worked in the Japanese Canadian community in Toronto, including for The New Canadian, which also published her poetry. She currently […]

Carolyn Nakagawa

Carolyn Nakagawa is a poet and playwright whose work has appeared in theatres around Greater Vancouver and in various literary journals across Canada, including Ricepaper, Room, EVENT, and CV2. She was a finalist for the Malahat Review’s 2017 Open Season contest in the poetry category. Born and raised in the suburbs of Vancouver, Carolyn studied […]