Moderator: Suzanne Kamata

Since arriving in Japan in 1975, Karen Hill Anton has raised four children, taught modern dance, written popular long-running columns for the Japan Times and Chunichi Shimbun, achieved second-degree mastery in Japanese calligraphy, and served on various private and government councils. As a consultant since 2000, she designed and managed employee development programs for global corporations in Japan. Her award-winning memoir The View from Breast Pocket Mountain, published in September 2020, tells the story of her early life in New York City, the world-straddling adventures that brought her to Japan, and recounts her experience living in rural Shizuoka Prefecture where she continues to make her home. She is currently finishing a novel.

Suzanne Kamata has been living and writing in Tokushima Prefecture, on the island of Shikoku, since 1988. She has written and/or edited fourteen published books including the anthology The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan (Stone Bridge Press, 1997), the multiple-award-winning memoir Squeaky Wheels: Travels with My Daughter by Train, Plane, Metro, Tuk-tuk and Wheelchair (Wyatt-Mackenzie Publishing, 2019), and the novel The Baseball Widow (Wyatt-Mackenzie Publishing, 2021). She is an associate professor in Global Studies at Naruto University of Education.

Watch video of Zoom talk: https://youtu.be/76mbucv69F4