Christopher Barzak

Category: Japan

  • Nebula Awards Interview

    Last year I was a nominee in the category of Best Novel for the Nebula Awards.  An interview was conducted then, and has just recently been posted on the Nebula Awards site.  Please go over and give it a read.  I can’t even remember what I said now, though! A photo of me singing karaoke…

  • Q&A

    Joseph Mallozzi hosts a book of the month club over at his very popular blog.  This month The Love We Share Without Knowing is the selection.  Joe posted a great response to the book and then opened the comments section up for questions from his fellow readers.  Today my responses went up.  We talked about…

  • Looking up

    There is a bird in the tree outside my window, singing the same two notes over and over, and I’m beginning to see green appear in patches as the snow melts. On Twitter, I can practice Japanese in small bites, which keeps me fresh.  Letter writing, at this point, takes too much out of me. …

  • To Japan:

    Muah! XO, Chris The Bird and The Bee – “Love Letter to Japan” Thanks, Karen! 🙂

  • Opposition

    I’m thinking about this tonight, before a reading I’m doing here at Chatham University in another hour: Opposition In my youth I was opposed to school. And now, again, I’m opposed to work. Above all it is health And righteousness that I hate the most. There’s nothing so cruel to man As health and honesty.…

  • 26 to 50

    While I was in Pittsburgh, I received news from Japanese translator Yoshio Kobayashi, alerting me to a new website (in both English and Japanese), called 26 to 50. The site will host fiction, reviews, interviews, discussion, news, etc. about the field of fantastic literature.  Right now the site has short interviews with Lucius Shepard, Tim…

  • On the other side of the world…

    I used to get annoyed by this sound by the end of summer, but right now I sort of miss it.  Maybe because summer has begun. Of course, here I have a virtual aviary surrounding me, which I would surely miss if I were on the other side of the world again for long.  Such…

  • Wabi-Sabi

    A friend wrote today to say, “I read your new book finally.  It’s very wabi-sabi.”  And more, of course.  But if she’d said nothing else but that it was very wabi-sabi, I would have been elated.  It’s the descriptor that I feel captures The Love We Share Without Knowing, and in a more American way,…

  • Dreaming backwards

    In another month and a half it will be three years since I returned home from Japan. Some days it feels as if I just got back.  I’m not sure of what that’s an indication, other than my life became the busiest it has ever been for the past couple of years, and perhaps that’s…

  • Palin san megane

    Dear Japanese readers who find my blog using the terms “Palin glasses” (in Japanese, of course): Those glasses are not cool.  Not cool at all, yo!  Kakko yokunai! By the way, since changing laptops to a MacBook, I’ve lost my Japanese language tool kit, which allowed me to type in Japanese, and I don’t know…