The following excerpt is taken from: “Sword Dancer”, a novella by Simon Rowe (see www.mightytales.net). *********** ONE From somewhere along the hallway of the Ternate Port Authority came the clack-clack sound of an old-fashioned ribbon typewriter being punched one finger at a time. A toilet flushed and a phone rang constantly in a far-off office. It …Read More
Category: Featured Writings (Page 8 of 14)
Featured writing
The third prize this year went to “Harukaze” by Anna Quinn (Pittsburgh, USA). Judges were impressed by how within 300 words the author introduced three generations of women with their strong and weak points. The beginning and end of the story provide a pleasing framework that contrasts the simplicities of nature with the troubled world …Read More
Echoes: Writers in Kyoto Anthology 2017 edited by John Dougill, Amy Chavez and Mark Richardson Writers in Kyoto (2017) ISBN-13: 978-1387479115 Review by Harry Martin in the Japan Society Newsletter, UK (March 2018) (See here.) Founded in the 8th century, Kyoto is the dignified and enigmatic Grande Dame of Japan, stoically fostering and preserving Japan’s cultural …Read More
The deadline for this year’s WiK Short Shorts Competition will be on March 1, and just a reminder that this year we are offering a top prize of ¥30,000 plus several other smaller prizes. The top three winners will be included in the next Writers in Kyoto Anthology, and details about how to purchase a …Read More
Driven by social media and falling concentration spans, the trend of recent times is for shorter and shorter fiction. Twitter is a prime example, with writers challenged to fit something meaningful into 140 characters. This was highlighted in a recent article in The Author, house magazine of the UK’s Society of Authors, which cited a …Read More
‘Common Sense’ By Lafcadio Hearn (a short story set in Kyoto and contained in Kotto, 1902) by Andrew Sokulski Zozaya (WiK intern) Kyoto is a city with abundant temples and rich in Buddhist history, so it is not surprising that a tale about a priest would be set there. ‘Common Sense’ by Lafcadio Hearn is …Read More
Persimmon Book review by Andrew Sokulski Zozaya (WiK intern) [Persimmon is a publication by the Hailstone Haiku Circle based in Kansai. The group was formed in 2000 and its webpage Icebox can be viewed here.] Persimmon emits an aura of originality. A particularly pleasing passage, for example, is a poetic sequence about Carmina Burana, the descriptive cantata. …Read More
The Ladies’ Temple in Saga By Jeff Robbins (Thanks to Sydney Solis for providing feedback on this.) In October, just before I left my home in Fukuoka to go to Kyoto, I discovered a Basho renku about the Nonomiya Shrine in Saga, west of Kyoto, and made time in my schedule to explore the verse …Read More
Our man in Himeji, WiK member Simon Rowe, reports on one of those startling phenomena in Japan – the constantly growing townscape. (For a previous Hyogo vignette, see here.) Notes from Himeji: A Fistful of Rice Crackers A lot can change in the space of a few weeks. One day you live in a …Read More
1. Not far from the American Embassy in Havana, mere steps from the body of water that proves narrower than ideology, stands a monument to the USS Maine, which exploded under mysterious circumstances in the city harbor over 100 years ago. Upon the monument an American eagle once perched, until on a January day in …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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