Speaker: David Joiner
Moderator: Lisa Wilcut
Date: Saturday, November 18, 2023

David Joiner is the author of Lotusland (Guernica Editions, 2015), set in Vietnam, and Kanazawa (Stone Bridge Press, 2022) and The Heron Catchers (forthcoming from SBP, November 2023), both set in Japan. He majored in Japanese studies in college and earned his master's degree in fiction, nonfiction, and playwriting. He served as a volunteer teacher in Vietnam in 1994 and again in 1997 and has spent a total of 12 years living in various parts of Vietnam over the past 29 years. He has lived in various places in Japan as well and is currently settled in Kanazawa.

He has spoken frequently about his fiction (see his website) and writing in general and in this talk will focus on how he decides to portray “place” in his novels, his process of writing scenes where setting plays an important role, and how living in Vietnam and in Japan has influenced his worldview and writing.