Below are several talks and interviews I’ve done for my novels The Heron Catchers, Kanazawa, and Lotusland. They include a video-recorded interview and Q&A with SWET (Society of Writers, Editors, and Translators), two podcasts (Stone Bridge Press and Books on Asia, a video-recorded talk and Q&A at the FCCJ (Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan) in Tokyo, and a national television broadcast in Vietnam (VTC10).
As I do more promotional interviews and talks, I’ll add them to this page.
Lisa Wilcut from the Society of Writers, Translators, and Editors (SWET) interviews me about the importance of setting in my novels, how I portray “place” in my writing, and how my 12 years in Vietnam and 10 years in Japan (so far) have impacted me personally and as a writer.
Stone Bridge Press, the publisher of my novels Kanazawa and The Heron Catchers, talk to me about both of these novels, what it’s like to live in the city of Kanazawa, how I approach writing about a country and culture of which I’m not a native, my writing process, and Kanazawa’s literary scene, among other topics.
In Tokyo, Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Robert Whiting talks to me at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan about my novel Kanazawa for the organization’s Book Break series.
On a visit to Hanoi in 2015, VTC-10, a national TV broadcaster in Vietnam, interviewed me about my novel Lotusland and my experience living in the country.
Amy Chavez, author and host of the Books on Asia Podcast, interviews me about my novel Kanazawa, which takes place in the Japanese city of the same name and is the first novel written in English to be set there. We cover a number of topics, including Kanazawa itself, its favorite “literary son” Izumi Kyōka, and of course my novel, which has as its protagonist an American man named Emmitt who is married to a Japanese woman and lives with her family in Kanazawa.
An interview from July 2024 with the Ireland-based Portuguese writer and podcaster Vitor Vicente about living in and writing about Japan and Vietnam.