KYOTO JOURNAL

One of my favorite magazines in the world has recently published Hagi Night, a personal essay, and The Setsubun Girl a very short story (an outtake, in fact, from THE TEAHOUSE FIRE) in volumes 61 and 62 respectively. They've also run my reviews of Amy Uyematsu's STONE BOW PRAYER and Chin Music Press's KUHAKU, edited by Bruce Rutledge.


SEVENTEEN REASONS

I am seven years into a ten-year daily haiku project called SEVENTEEN REASONS, begun and continued as correspondence with my best friend Melissa Demian. Several of these poems currently appear in IN PIECES: AN ANTHOLOGY OF FRAGMENTARY WRITING, published by lovely Seattle-based Impassio Press.

Nine (other) poems from SEVENTEEN REASONS appear in ENHAIKLOPEDIA, published in Kyoto by the Hailstone Haiku Circle, edited by Basho translator Stephen Gill. They're only sold in Japan, but I did bring a few copies back with me. Though slim, ENHAIKLOPEDIA features haiku and haibun (prose built around haiku) by fifty poets, including beautiful work by Tito, Sally McLaren, and Keiko Yurugi. If you're interested, please send me a check for $15.


THE BOOK OF SALT

Every writer who publishes a book probably has another in a drawer that will never see the light of day. Mine is a collection of three novellas called THE BOOK OF SALT, which has the misfortune of sharing a title with another book written at the same time, the elegantly melancholy first novel by Monique Truong.

Heady from having finished my first book, I had the further misfortune of believing too much in my work: my hubris took the form of producing a mini CD of me reading aloud from each of the three novellas.

If you're curious to hear what it sounds like, send me a check for $6 and I'll send you FOUR SALTS IN THREE ACTS: TWENTY MINUTES FROM THE BOOK OF SALT. The book was the runner-up for the Pirate's Alley William Faulkner Creative Writing Competition in 2001, and in a roundabout way helped me find my agent, so it's not all bad.