(The following article first appeared in Echoes: Writers in Kyoto Anthology 2017) Three Old Men of Kyotoby Alex Kerr Harold StewartDavid KiddWilliam Gilkey I don’t know if young men are like this any more, but I was the sort of young man who sat at the feet of old men. I hung on their every …Read More
Category: WiK members (Page 17 of 25)
Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto
A SELECT LISTING OF BOOKS BY MEMBERS OF WRITERS IN KYOTO ******************* AMY CHAVEZ (non-fiction) Amy’s Guide to Best Behavior in Japan (Stone Bridge, 2018)Guide to Japanese customs & etiquette. Running the Shikoku Pilgrimage: 900 Miles to Enlightenment (Volcano Press, 2012)First-person account of circling Japan’s Buddhist 88-Temple Pilgrimage route. Japan, Funny Side Up (e-book, 2010)A …Read More
The Mad Kyoto Shoe Swapper And Other Short StoriesRebecca Otowa160pp A Personal Response by Ian ‘Josh’ Yates Though I have read a lot recently, I have written very little. I could blame any number of things, from the noise of my children to the gloom that doesn’t seem to disappear even when the clouds dissipate. …Read More
Greenhouse Bluesby Simon Rowe Last month a fortuitous thing happened. I discovered a large greenhouse beside the university where I work. It is used by the Faculty of Pharmacological Science to grow medicinal plants for research and is tended by a retinue of elderly men in powder-blue overalls who water and weed and keep the …Read More
Below are two more villanelles from Preston Keido Houser. A villanelle is a fixed-form poem consisting of five tercets and a quatrain which follows a specific rhyme scheme using only two different sounds. It originated as a form of ballad and took its name from a 1606 poem by Jean Passarat, coming into fashion in …Read More
Lunch with Rebecca Otowareported by Lisa Wilcut WiK members gathered on the misty afternoon of March 14 for a lunch talk with Rebecca Otowa at Ume no Hana near Karasuma Oike. The congruence of season and venue hinted at the deep connections with time and place that are a hallmark of Rebecca’s works, which are …Read More
by Preston Keido Houser There once was a monk from Tangier Whose prayers left him nothing to hear But by embracing the violence Of interminable silence Did a mantra appear to his ear There once was a monk from Bayonne Who was blind to the beam he was shown But by loving his eyes Did …Read More
Meet Your Inner Witch in Just Five Easy Stepsby Marianne Kimura Introduction: I’ve had to find out a lot about witches in the course of writing academic pieces about Shakespeare’s plays with witches, such as Macbeth, or in which some sort of magic occurs, like The Winter’s Tale. From my gleanings, I wrote this brief …Read More
A SINGLE THREADJames Woodham a single threadthe spider’s leaving light travelling along it breeze sliding it back a whiteness of wings –from the shore a heron liftsaway on water *********** egret takes to airwingtips grazing the lakegliding on shadow *********** a piece of the dusk breaks off and takes to the airbecoming heron leaves hardly movingfrom the depths of the blue …Read More
Here Comes Kenji by Kevin Ramsden It was late on a weekday afternoon, and James was nearly two-thirds into his second beer of the day. Raising his head from the reading of his newspaper, he gazed absently around the barely populated bar he was sat in, properly taking in his surroundings for the first time. …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
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