Sawako Nakayasu to Speak on October 8

On October 8, Sawako Nakayasu will visit the University to perform a public reading of original work. The event will be hosted at 5:30 PM in the Hanes Gallery; it will be free and open to the public, with a reception to follow.

This event is presented by the Department of English, along with the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, the Office of the Dean of the College, and Global Wake Forest.

Sawako Nakayasu was born in Japan, raised in the US, and has also lived in France and China along the way. Her most recent books are The Ants (Les Figues Press, 2014), and Texture Notes (Letter Machine, 2010), and recent translations include The Collected Poems of Sagawa Chika (Canarium Books, 2015), and Tatsumi Hijikata’s Costume en Face (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2015). Other books include Hurry Home Honey (Burning Deck, 2009), and Mouth: Eats Color – Sagawa Chika Translations, Anti-translations, & Originals, which is a multilingual work of both original and translated poetry. Her translation of Takashi Hiraide’s For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut (New Directions, 2008) received the 2009 Best Translated Book Award from Three Percent. She has received fellowships from the NEA and PEN, and her own work has been translated into Japanese, Norwegian, Swedish, Arabic, Chinese, and Vietnamese.
Sawako Nakayasu has also appeared on Japanese television as a poetry judge for Zunou-ou (purportedly a contest of intellectual fortitude), made numerous performances and one short film, performed in a re-enactment of Yvonne Rainer’s Grand Union Dreams (dir. Yelena Gluzman) and Cornelius Cardew’s Paragraphs 4 & 7 from The Great Learning (dir. Tomomi Adachi), and currently teaches at Brown University in the Department of Literary Arts.