JET alums at Japan Writers Conference in Tokyo
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The ４th annual Japan Writers Conference will be held Oct. 10-11 in Tokyo with 30 writers giving 50-minute presentations about the artistic and business sides of their respective fields, which inlcude fiction, poetry, journalism and even EFL textbook writing. At least four of the presenters are former JETs.
The venue is the Ekoda Campus of Nihon University College of Art. You can find full details by visiting http://www.japanwritersconference.org/or following the event on Twitter via http://twitter.com/JapanWritersCon
Here are some slightly shortened versions of the official descriptions of presentations to be made by JET alums:
DWAYNE LIVELY (Niigata-ken, 1996-99) “My Freeware Life.”
The lecture focuses on my experiments with various freeware writing programs, some of which promise to help improve the writing process. The first part of the lecture introduces a number of freeware writing programs that have been suggested by and/or designed by fellow writers. I will explain the results of my experiments with each program and will demonstrate how easy, or not, they are to use, how they changed my writing process and whether or not I intend to keep using them. Next, I will describe what happened when I attempted to follow a handful of “how to write a novel” plans offered free online. Finally, I will introduce the moral if the lecture, including what I learned and what I managed to accomplish during all the experiments.
Dwayne Lively’s fiction has appeared in Twister, Kansas Quarterly, and The MacGuffin. His non-fiction and reviews have appeared in Transitions Abroad, Literary Magazine Review and online at Notebookism.com. He has been a writer, teacher and editor for the better part of 20 years and worked and taught in Japan, the USA and Albania. In his dwindling free time he’s been finishing up a novel and, on occasion, writing the online journal The Crazy Japan Times ( http://www.crazyjapan.com).
SUZANNE KAMATA (Tokushima-ken, 1988-90): “Marketing for Beginners.”
Getting your book into print is the easy part. Publishing it – making your work known to the public – takes a bit more effort. These days, writers are often expected to submit a marketing plan along with manuscripts, and most publishers expect writers to take an active role in marketing. So how do you market a book if you’re living in rural Japan, far from your target audience? Suzanne Kamata, author of five books with meagre advertising budgets, will suggest some easy, cheap, and not so obvious ways for expats to spread the word about their books.
Suzanne Kamata again: “Kickstart Your Creativity”
Suzanne Kamata will lead participants in writing exercises meant to warm up the writer and/or kickstart creativity when the muse is absent. Bring a notebook and a writing implement.
Suzanne Kamata is the author of the novel Losing Kei (Leapfrog Press, 2008) and editor of three anthologies – Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs (Beacon Press, May 2008) The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan (Stone Bridge Press, 1997), and Call Me Okaasan: Adventures in Multicultural Mothering (Wyatt-Mackenzie Publishing, 2009). She also serves as fiction editor of the popular on-line journal literarymama.com from Tokushima, Japan, where she lives with her family.
TODD JAY LEONARD (1989-92): “So you want to publish an EFL textbook?–Four Points of View to Consider when Writing a Proposal–The Myths and Realities of EFL Publishing in Japan.”
Most likely, every language teacher in Japan has (at some point during his/her tenure) contemplated writing a textbook to fill a void in the market…in that constant search for the perfect, all encompassing textbook. What are publishers looking for in the current market? What appeals to editors who ultimately decide which titles go to production and which ones do not? What are the salespeople on the front lines hearing from their market base? What must an author do in order to get his/her book published? This presentation focuses on these very questions, offering inside insights from all the various points of view that must be considered when writing a proposal to publish a textbook–the publisher, the editor, the salesperson, and the author.
Todd Jay Leonard has been actively involved in book publishing for twenty years and has published twenty books. He lives, writes, and teaches on the southern island of Kyushu, where he is a university professor at Fukuoka University of Education. He has published extensively in academic journals, magazines and newspapers on cross-cultural, historical, and Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) themes.
TOM BAKER (Chiba-ken, 1989-91), “Interviewing Creative Subjects: Actors, Authors, Artists and Auteurs.”
Interviewing a creative subject requires thorough preparation to elicit original and interesting quotes. My talk will explain how to do the research, write the questions and conduct the interview. It will briefly touch on turning quotes into a story. A well-prepared interviewer will be familiar with the subject’s previous interviews, online self-expression and body of work. The interviewer will look for themes and connections in the work to ask probing questions about its meaning. The interviewer will prepare questions ranging from basic to technical to off-the-wall, but will use the list only as a guideline to the conversation. The interviewer will tolerate digressions (within reason) and allow thoughtful silences to bear fruit. The interviewer will look for local angles and connections to current events.
Tom Baker has been a staff writer for The Daily Yomiuri since 2001, and has interviewed Sylvester Stallone, Liv Tyler, Marlon Wayans, John Woo, Nicholas Sparks, Barry Eisler, Brian K. Vaughan, Michael Sowa and many others. He is a coauthor of Tokyo Chic and The Sushi Lover’s Cookbook.
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