Date: Saturday, July 11 (Japan); Friday, July 10 (North America)
**Please note the change of date
Time: 9:00–11:00 a.m. JST; 8:00–10:00 p.m. EDT; 5:00–7:00 PDT
Moderator: Avery Udagawa
Register in advance: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/bHNJBpOKRsCcby2ZQBknBg

Writer and teacher Holly Thompson was active in SWET and SCBWI during her long sojourn in Japan from the 1980s to 2023. Now settled in Massachusetts, her diverse writing, spanning fiction, nonfiction, prose and poetry, for children, teens, and adults, continues. 
     From Bangkok, translator and teacher Avery Udagawa will help us catch up with our long-time friend and fellow wordsmith and learn how she has carried on her writing career through several decades, between two cultures and countries.

Holly Thompson studied biology at Mount Holyoke College, and first moved to Japan in the 1980s, teaching English in high schools. After completing the NYU graduate creative writing program and working as a copy editor in New York, she returned to Japan with her husband and young children. They settled in Kamakura, and Holly began teaching at Yokohama City University. She joined SWET and held various roles in the Society of Childrens Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) Japan before moving back to Massachusetts in late 2023.
     Holly writes fiction and nonfiction, prose and poetry, for children, teens and adults. Her picture book Listening to Trees: George Nakashima, Woodworker, written in haibun form and illustrated by Toshiki Nakamura, celebrates the life and work of this Japanese American craftsman. Her picture book The Wakame Gatherers depicts a bicultural girl who goes seaweed gathering with her Japanese and American grandmothers. Her verse novel Falling into the Dragon’s Mouth depicts a non-Japanese student in a Japanese school facing an escalating bullying situation. In her YA verse novel The Language Inside, poetry crosses boundaries, connecting a Japan-raised American girl with a Cambodian-American boy. In her YA verse novel Orchards (APALA Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature), Kana, a half Japanese girl, is sent to spend the summer with mikan farming relatives after the death of a classmate. Thompson’s novel Ash is set in Kagoshima and Kyoto. Currently, she’s at work on picture books, a middle grade novel, a verse novel and a prose novel. Now and then she dips a toe into children’s book translation.
Holly continues to teach at Yokohama City University, and is a visiting author in schools, and writing instructor at GrubStreet Boston.