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Posts from the ‘Suzanne’ Category

Apr 11

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Suzanne: My interview with Leza Lowitz

My fellow American-expatriate Leza Lowitz came to Japan around the same time that I did. I met her after finding her name in a literary journal and writing a letter to invite her to submit to an anthology of expat fiction I’d cooked up. She was extremely helpful. She contributed a story to my anthology, The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Exptriates in Literary Japan, and passed on the names and addresses of other expat writers that she knew.

Since then, Leza has gone on to publish an amazing fifteen books (!) to my three. These include translations, anthologies, poetry collections, and a short story collection. She’s also written a screenplay and won an impressive array of grants and awards. Right now she’s working on a memoir about adopting a Japanese child in Japan, yoga poems, and a novel or two.

My interview with Leza is now online here.

Apr 8

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Suzanne: An Introduction

I’m an American living in Japan with my Japanese baseball coach husband and our eight-year-old twins. For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a writer. I’ve been writing stories and novels since childhood. This year – after five attempts at writing a novel – I have finally succeeded in publishing one. Losing Kei, my debut, completed in stolen hours at coffee shops and at the kitchen table while my family slept, was published in January.

Another project which I worked on simultaneously – an anthology entitled Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs – will be officially published next month. And coming up, in November, Topka Press will publish my first children’s picture book, Playing for Papa.

So it’s going to be a great year, and yet I still feel like I’m teetering on the edge of a career as a writer. It’s been two years since I finished writing my novel and the short story that will become a picture book. I’d expected to have another novel completed by now, especially since my children are now in elementary school. And the short story collection that was accepted for publication by a press that I admire is no longer accepted. The editor that I was working with died suddenly, and the press’s interest in my work died along with him. And what’s more, the publisher of my novel has sold his company. The new owners seem to have a different vision for the company, one that might not include me.

So this writing business, I’ve found, is a precarious one. There are infinite levels of failure. Yet I persist. I didn’t start writing for money or fame or adulation. I wrote because I love it. And I still do.

Having written five novels already, I know that I can go the distance and write another one. This month, the members of my writer’s group have committed ourselves to writing 10,000 words. As of today, I’ve completed 2,663 words on my novel-in-progress. Onward!