‘Fragrant Harbor’ they called it. But Hong Kong was anything but fragrant the night Poh Seng Pang flew in. The air outside the terminal was dank, vegetative—like the smell of the Singapore River in wet season, or the streets of the Jurong Wholesale Market after a deluge. Poh found it strangely comforting. He checked his …Read More
Category: WiK members (Page 20 of 25)
Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto
Running is not an activity you associate with my family. So says my brother Rod. This is true in recent decades. Vigorous exercise has not been our forte. That changed when I was lured to join the regular circuit runners around Nijojo (Nijo Castle) in Kyoto. A 2 km circuit that encircles the castle, its …Read More
Hello fellow WiK members, and a very happy, hot and humid holiday season to you all. I’m not sure about your good selves, but at this time of the year, in Kyoto especially, I find it hard to generate enough energy or even enthusiasm for anything, including lengthy pieces of writing. It is at this …Read More
Forsaking the farce of form and faceArtists forced to raze the dominant paradigmSeizing the sense of silence and space The painter replicates without a traceFleeing frigid hue and spectral climeForsaking the farce of form and face The poet shuns a language of sonorous laceRefuses circumscription to rhythm and rhymeSeizing the sense of silence and space …Read More
Dougal McLeish had been staring out of his office window for a full hour, the yellowing light of an early autumnal evening creeping slowly across the cluttered desktop in front of him. Hands folded in his lap, shoulders sagging forward, his demeanour bore all the hallmarks of the dejected. Yet, there was no sadness in …Read More
When is Ryōan-ji not Ryōan-ji? At what point does representation become abstraction, or does one thing morph into something totally different? John Cage loved stones, and collected them from all over the world. He also loved Ryōan-ji from the moment he saw it during his first trip to Japan in 1962. In 1983 Cage began …Read More
“Encounters With Kyoto” Book launch– report by Iris Reinbacher On Saturday, June 22nd, WiK held the official launch party for the 3rd Writers in Kyoto Anthology, called Encounters With Kyoto. About half of WiK’s members came all the way to Umekoji Park’s Midori Building, where Jann Williams had set up a room full of food, …Read More
Pearl City by Simon Rowe A Mami Suzuki Mystery Silhouetted against the noonday sky, the president of Tokai Pearls Ltd. stood at his suite window and surveyed the harbor. His gaze ranged from the shipyards and submarine docks of Kawasaki Heavy Industries to the Mosaic shopping mall and its slow-turning Ferris wheel, then to the …Read More
Way Back When On my doorstep happy as an utter fool I gaze at Mount Hira. Wind in the arms of the May-leaved trees, a chill on my skin. I think of Cid Corman and a friend who knows Gary Snyder cloud on the mountain. Wind soughing the leaves, a drop of rain now the …Read More
On sale now from amazon.com, amazon.co.jp and other Amazon marketplaces. (Revised 2021) Edited by Jann Williams and Ian Josh YatesForeword by Juliet Winters Carpenter Inside these covers lies the third collection of enticing works by Writers in Kyoto. From gardens to gangsters, temples to tourism, ceramics to Casablanca, the diverse writings of 22 authors will …Read More
WiK 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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