I am a novelist and journalist who has been writing about war and refugees for nearly two decades. In 2018, I went to the Greek island of Samos, which held one of the most inhumane refugee camps in Europe, to talk to people there about their lives and hopes. Out of this, I wrote several articles and later two books, including The Good Deed. My hope is to counteract the demonization of refugees, so rife in the world today, by bringing out all that we humans have in common, such as our need for shelter, food, family, safety, and love.
News & Review Type: News
Helen Benedict, author of upcoming novel “The Good Deed”, shares the most honest novels about being a refugee on Shepherd
Pamela Uschuk shares her poem, “Green Flame,” from REFUGEE on episode of Poems You Need!
Poets Melissa Studdard and Kelli Russell Agodon share the poems “Green Flame” from Refugee (Red Hen Press, May 2022) and “Self Help Manual” from Crazy Love (Wings Press, 2009) by Pamela Uschuk.
The Wall Street Journal praises Percival Everett, author of SONNETS FOR A MISSING KEY: “How a Literary Darling Finally Broke Through to the Mainstream”!
Between an Oscar-winning movie adaptation of one of his books and a new novel with rave reviews, Percival Everett’s gone from cult favorite to superstar
Percival Everett is poised for a big year.
SEE THE COVER FOR EUNICE HONG’S DEBUT BOOK MEMENTO MORI
Eunice Hong graduated from Columbia Law School, creates jewelry, and is a weaver. She also is the winner of the Red Hen Press Fiction Award for her debut book Memento Mori, which is a saga about a Korean family that uses the myths of Eurydice, Orpheus, Persephone, and Hades to explore grief, love, trauma, and death.
Click here to read more.
30 New Books Critics Think You Should Read Right Now – David Masumoto, with artwork by Patricia Wakida, Secret Harvest: A Hidden Story of Separation and the Resilience of a Family Farm
Secret Harvests limns the compounded tragedy of the Japanese internment for one family, when a cognitively disabled member, herself disabled via the racism of inadequate medical care–was separated and “lost” to the family during World War II. David Mas Masumoto uncovers the smallest thread of the story and achieves the seemingly impossible feat of reconnecting the lost family member whose story had been lost to racism but also family shame.
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Listen to Apple Podcast “The Academic Life” speak with David Mas Masumoto
Today’s book is: Secret Harvests: A Hidden Story of Separation and the Resilience of a Family Farm (Red Hen Press, 2023), by David Mas Masumoto. In his new memoir, Mas discovers his “lost” aunt. She had been taken away in 1942 when all Japanese Americans were considered the enemy and imprisoned. Due to a disability, she became a “ward” of the state; and his family believed she had died. Then came a surprising phone call—she was alive and living a few miles from their family farm.
Click here to listen.
David Mas Masumoto and how a funeral home worker tracked down a family — and uncovered a decades-old secret
Growing up, Mas Masumoto was vaguely aware that he had an aunt who’d been separated from the family in the 1940s. Her name was Shizuko Sugimoto, and she had an intellectual disability. As was often done in those days, she became a ward of the state. The family never talked about her, and assumed she had passed away.
But one day in 2012, Masumoto received a surprising phone message from a funeral home worker named Renée Johnson.
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The New York Times highlights author Percival Everett
In a narrow, windowless room at the University of Southern California, a group of graduate students is workshopping a short story….
While they speak, their professor, the novelist Percival Everett, sits quietly at the head of a too-large table, one palm steadied against it, his body swivelling almost imperceptibly from side to side…He talks at a low volume, but the sounds he makes have the electric quality of speech being filtered through a mike.
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Anna V.Q. Ross’s poem THIRTEEN on The Slowdown Podcast
Today’s poem celebrates the glow and growth of daughters, their energy and curiosity, their intuition and vulnerability.
Click here to listen.
Juliana Lamy on The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction’s longlist
“Every sentence Juliana Lamy writes is like a match being struck. Not many authors debut with her clarity of vision, inventiveness, and verbal agility, and I would wager almost anything that You Were Watching from the Sand will mark only the first chapter in an important body of work.” —Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories
Click here to read more.
Theresa Bonpane on the Bibliocracy Podcast on KPFK
Catch her episode on March 5, 2024 Episode at 2:00pm
Listen here.
MacLeish Sq. on the short list of the Somerset Awards for Literary and Contemporary Fiction
The SOMERSET Book Awards recognize emerging talent and outstanding works in the genre of Literary and Contemporary Fiction.
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Poem-a-Day features Allison Joseph’s “Incognito Grief: A Blues”!
About this Poem
“This poem is inspired by the great songwriter and American treasure Paul Simon. I was teaching one of my college poetry classes about the strength of the interrogative in poetry. I thought of the great Paul Simon song ‘Nobody’––it’s a song full of questions that have no easy answers. The poem comes from a writing exercise that I gave to both my students and myself.”
—Allison Joseph
David Mas Masumoto, author of SECRET HARVESTS, featured on My Unsung Hero Podcast!
A worker at a funeral home makes a special effort to locate the family members of an ailing woman, and unwittingly uncovers a family secret that goes back decades.
David Mas Masumoto discusses SECRET HARVESTS on KALW’s Your Call!
On this edition of Your Call, David “Mas” Masumoto discusses his new memoir, Secret Harvests: A Hidden Story of Separation and the Resilience of a Family Farm.
It tells the story of his aunt Shizuko, who was disabled and taken as a “ward of the state” in 1942, just before the rest of Masumoto’s family members were forced into WWII concentration camps. For 70 years, the family believed Shizuko was dead, until one day Masumoto received a call. She was alive — and living just a few miles away from their family farm.
In Secret Harvests, Masumoto attempts to reconstruct his aunt’s life and pierce the veil of silence surrounding her disability and survival, as well as his family’s incarceration in the Gila River Relocation Center in the Arizona desert, south of Phoenix.
Guest:
David “Mas” Masumoto, organic peach and grape farmer and author of twelve books, including Epitaph for a Peach: For Seasons on a Family Farm.