Goddesses and Ninjas: the mad, dashing world of Shakespeare interview with Marianne Kimura Q. It was a fiercely hot summer in Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan. How did you cope? A. I stayed indoors in my air-conditioned bedroom and sat on my futon writing papers. First, I wrote about the goddess in As You …Read More
Author: John Dougill (Page 26 of 45)
John Dougill writes… Few WiK members will be aware that in a sense Writers in Oxford is our parent organisation. Not in any formal basis, but simply as a source of inspiration. The links go back to 1993, when I had returned to Oxford after a six year spell in Japan and heard of an …Read More
Anuradha Gupta is an Indian living in London who decided to publish her own book. In the following interview she shares with Writers in Kyoto how she went about producing her own personally illustrated collection of poems without any previous knowledge or expertise. What made you want to publish your own book? In January 2013 …Read More
1) Please tell us something about your background and how you come to be in Japan? I was born in Poland (Kędzierzyn-Koźle) in 1982 and grew up during the harsh reality of political transition, social transformation, and dysfunctional economy characteristic for that time. My childhood memories and accounts of my parents during communist rule and …Read More
Ways with Words (at Dartington Hall, Totnes, UK) by John Dougill For the past week I’ve been attending a literary gathering deep in the Devon countryside. Medieval buildings, beautiful grounds, gorgeous countryside and Britain’s finest residential festival, with ten days of simultaneous talks by the country’s top selling authors. This year coincided with a spell …Read More
Please tell us a little about your upbringing and your relationship with Japan. I was born in Colorado and grew up in a family that loved nature, storytelling, and the fine arts. Between 1948 and 1960, my parents were educational missionaries. We were first in China and then in Japan. We arrived in Japan early …Read More
July in Kyoto means the Gion Festival, the city’s premier event which stretches over the whole month and provides tourists with an array of glittering photo-ops. The piece below is an excerpt from “Kyoto Souvenir,” a book by Fernando Torres still in the preliminary stages which tells of buying a forsaken house in Higashiyama. (He describes …Read More
Those familiar with the rich heritage of artwork in Japan will be aware of numerous stories about painted figures which are so life-like that they come alive and step out of their frames, like the characters in Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo. The Kyoto painter Okyo Murayama for instance painted a ghost that …Read More
The summer that Japan hosted the World Cup was one of the highlights of my many years there. By day I was hitchhiking the 33 temples of the Kansai Kannon pilgrimage, while at night I’d return to a city somewhere to watch a match. I’d choose bars or pubs that had a connection to one …Read More
Gnome Poetry and Improv Evening (24/6/2018) There once was a monk from Madrid Who declared that his good deeds were hid. Not thinking a thought Nor seeking the sought, His doing was nothing he did. Capitalist cat chasing leaves As if they were mice American short hair Sometimes you get it back But …Read More
Kyoto Writing Competition
WiK Anthologies
The Nature of Kyoto (2023)
Eds. Lisa Twaronite Sone & Robert Weis
Foreword by Pico Iyer
Structures of Kyoto (2021)
Eds: Rebecca Otowa & Karen Lee Tawarayama
Foreword by Judith Clancy
Encounters with Kyoto (2019)
Eds: Jann Williams & Ian Josh Yates
Foreword by Juliet Winters Carpenter
Echoes (2017)
Eds: John Dougill, Amy Chavez, & Mark Richardson
Preface by Alex Kerr
Recent Comments