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Kyoto Journal offers thought-provoking cultural perspectives from Asia. A non-profit, all-volunteer production now in its 19th year, KJ has been shortlisted ten years in a row for the Utne Independent Press Awards. In 2006, it was again nominated in the category of International Coverage. In 2004, the journal was nominated for General Excellence, Design, and Cultural/Social Coverage. Previous nominations were for Art & Design Excellence (award winner, 1998), Local/Regional Coverage, Writing Excellence, Design, General Excellence, and Best Essays. For full details of the latest issue, see number 65.

New books from El León Literary Arts include Bluebird in My Window and draite a u méure by Frank Dituri and Locke 1928 by Shawna Yang Ryan.

Incorporated as a nonprofit public benefit corporation in California in 2001, El León Literary Arts was established to promote and strengthen the arts and education. Publishing fiction, poetry, or texts with graphics of high quality that are unlikely to be published in the current commercial marketplace, El León seeks to keep alive a rich diversity of written voices.

El León’s publisher is author Thomas Farber, who is also Senior Lecturer in English at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Sacred Vows,” a bilingual reading in Khmer and English by U Sam Oeur, will be held Tues., April 10, 2007, at 3:30 p.m. in Kuykendall 410, on the UH-Manoa Campus.

U Sam Oeur grew up in a Cambodian farming family. After studying in the U.S., he served in the Cambodian government. When Pol Pot assumed power in 1975, U Sam Oeur, along with his wife and son, survived the killing fields in six forced-labor camps by feigning illiteracy.

His highly acclaimed book of poetry, Sacred Vows, recalls the terror of those years and the beauty of Cambodia’s resilient culture. U Sam Oeur’s reading style is mesmerizing, emotionally charged, and operatic, combining song and chant and a full range of tones.

This event is sponsored by UHM Center for Southeast Asian Studies, TinFish, MANOA, Manoa Foundation, and UHM Dept. of English.

Haruki Murakami will read on Thursday, April 26, 2007, at 7:30 p.m. in the Campus Center Ballroom of the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa.

Murakami is one of the most widely translated Japanese novelists, having built an international following with his daringly original fiction. He is best known for the novels Kafka on the Shore (2005) and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1999). His latest short-story collection, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (2006), has been awarded the 2007 Kiriyama Prize.

This event is sponsored by the UHM Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures; UHM College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature; Bruce Arinaga; UH Distinguished Lecture Series; Hawai‘i Literary Arts Council; and MANOA. For information, e-mail MANOA at mjournal-l@hawaii.edu or call 956-8805.

The 2007 Kiriyama Prize winners have been announced. Congratulations to the authors of the winning selections and the finalists!

Fiction Prize: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, a collection of short stories by Haruki Murakami
“While anyone can tell a story that resembles a dream,” Laura Miller wrote in The New York Times Book Review, “it’s the rare artist, like this one, who can make us feel that we are dreaming it ourselves”—a feat performed anew twenty-four times in this career-spanning book. (Source: Random House)
Other links: New York Times archived reviews and excerpts (registration necessary)

Nonfiction Prize: Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
Three Cups of Tea is at once an unforgettable adventure and the inspiring true story of how one man really is changing the world—one school at a time. (Source: Penguin)
Other links: PBS Audio Interview with Greg Mortenson

Fiction Finalists:
The Inheritance of Loss, Kirin Desai (Grove Atlantic)
Stick Out Your Tongue, Ma Jian, translated by Flora Drew (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Certainty, Madeleine Thien (McClelland & Stewart, Canada; Little, Brown, USA)
Behold the Many, Lois-Ann Yamanaka (Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Picador)

Nonfiction Finalists:
The Haiku Apprentice, Abigail Friedman (Stone Bridge Press)
Blonde Indian: An Alaska Native Memoir, Ernestine Hayes (University of Arizona Press)
Tigers in Red Weather: A Quest for the Last Wild Tigers, Ruth Padel (Walker & Company)
Chinese Lessons: An American, His Classmates, and the Story of the New China, John Pomfret (Henry Holt)

Visit the Kiriyama Prize site for a complete list of notable books.

The Kiriyama Prize recognizes outstanding books about the Pacific Rim and South Asia. It is administered by Pacific Rim Voices, an organization whose aim is “to encourage greater understanding of and among the peoples and nations of the Pacific Rim and South Asia.”

—Compiled by Sharon Fujimoto-Johnson