Join us as we launch new books by Yonsei authors Brynn Saito, Brandon Shimoda, and Jami Nakamura Lin. Their work spans multiple genres but all orbits around intersecting themes of hauntings, inheritance, dreamworlds, collective pasts, and imagined futures. Each author will read from their new works, then come together for a conversation moderated by poet Troy Osaki. This program is supported, in part, by the City of Seattle Office of Arts & Culture and presented in partnership with Tadaima and The Elliott Bay Book Company.
Brynn Saito / Under a Future Sky
Brynn Saito’s third book of poems, Under a Future Sky, was published in August by Red Hen Press. She’s the recipient of the Benjamin Saltman Award, a finalist for the Northern California Book Award, and her work has appeared in the New York Times, VOGUE, and American Poetry Review. Brynn teaches in the MFA program at Fresno State, located on Yokuts and Mono lands. She’s co-editing with Brandon Shimoda an anthology of poetry written by descendants of the Japanese American / Nikkei incarceration, forthcoming in 2025 from Haymarket Books.
Brandon Shimoda / Hydra Medusa
Brandon Shimoda is the author of several books of poetry and prose, including The Grave on the Wall (City Lights, 2019), which received the PEN Open Book Award, and Hydra Medusa (Nightboat Books, 2023). His next book is on the afterlife of Japanese American incarceration, and is forthcoming from City Lights. With the poet Brynn Saito, he is co-editing an anthology of poetry on Nikkei (Japanese American/Canadian) incarceration, which is forthcoming from Haymarket Books in 2025.
Jami Nakamura Lin / The Night Parade
Jami Nakamura Lin is the Japanese Taiwanese Okinawan American author of the speculative memoir The Night Parade (Mariner Books/HarperCollins and Scribe UK, October 24, 2023), illustrated by her sister Cori. A former Catapult columnist, she’s been published in The New York Times, Electric Literature, Passages North, and other publications. She has received fellowships and support from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, Yaddo, Sewanee Writers Conference, We Need Diverse Books, and more. She received her MFA in nonfiction from Pennsylvania State University and lives in the Chicago area.
Troy Osaki, moderator
The great-grandson of Filipino and Japanese immigrants, Troy Osaki is a poet, organizer, and attorney. Osaki is a three-time grand slam poetry champion and has earned fellowships from Kundiman, Hugo House, and Jack Straw Cultural Center. He was awarded a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry fellowship from the Poetry Foundation in 2022. A graduate of Seattle University School of Law, he interned at Creative Justice, an arts-based alternative to incarceration for youth in King County. He lives in Seattle, WA.
