Monday, October 29, 2012

Winner of the 2012 Canada-Japan Literary Award


I was delighted to hear that my memoir The Reading List has won the Canada Council for the Arts Canada-Japan Literary Prize!  The news release and jury's comments can be read here.  As a fourth-generation Japanese-Canadian (Yonsei), this award means a lot to me because it recognizes the hybrid nature of my cultural experience, growing up Canadian, but with Japan always present as that body of ancestral stories, collective memories and fantasies ... my imaginary homeland.

To celebrate, we have made my memoir available as an e-book.  For the kindle version, click here, and for the kobo version, click here.

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About Me

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Toronto, ON, Canada
Leslie Shimotakahara is a writer and recovering academic, who wanted to be simply a writer from before the time she could read. Hard-pressed to answer her parents’ question of how she would support herself as a writer, Leslie got drawn into the labyrinthine study of literature, completing her B.A. in Honours English from McGill in 2000, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Modern American Literature from Brown in 2006. After graduation, she taught English at St. Francis Xavier University for two years. Leslie woke up one morning and realized that she’d had enough of the Ivory Tower. The fact that she wasn’t doing what she wanted to do with her life loomed over her, and the realization was startling. It was time to stop studying and passively observing life and do something real instead. She needed to discover herself and tell her own story. This blog and the book she has written under the same title (Variety Crossing Press, spring 2012) are her foray. Leslie's writing has been published in WRITE, TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Maple Tree Literary Supplement, and GENRE.