We’re very pleased to announce our second Japanese writer in residence, Motoyuki Shibata,who will be visiting Norwich UNESCO City of Literature in August as part of a programme generously supported by the Nippon Foundation.
I am a Japanese translator of contemporary of American fiction. Among writers I have translated are Paul Auster, Steven Millhauser, Steve Erickson, Stuart Dybek, Kelly Link, and Laird Hunt. Although I basically translate from English to Japanese, I edit an annual English-language literary journal called Monkey Business , which aims to introduce contemporary Japanese authors to the English-speaking audience and is published in the US through a generous grant from the Nippon Foundation. I also run a Japanese-language literary journal called Monkey, which is published three times a year in Japan, and in which I publish a lot of my own translations of stories and poems written in English.
This August I hope to get away from the infernal heat in Tokyo and work in peace on one of my projects, translating the two autobiographical books by Paul Auster—Winter Journal (2012) and Report from the Interior (2013)—at the same time editing the next issue of Monkey. Needless to say I hope to benefit by meeting literary people in Norwich, about whom and which I have heard only good things from a number of friends.