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Karen Tei
Yamashita

Karen Tei Yamashita
Fiction Writer and Playwright
Santa Cruz, CA
2011 USA Fellow

This award was generously supported by the Ford Foundation.
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Writer Karen Tei Yamashita has published four novels and one collection of short stories, as well as non-fiction. Yamashita’s intensely researched novels reflect her interests in communities whose stories often go untold, such as Japanese Brazilian history in Brazil-Maru (1992) and a fictional history of the Asian American movement in I Hotel (2010), which won several awards and was as a finalist for the National Book Award. Her work has received several honors, including an American Book Award for Through the Arc of the Rain Forest (1990).

Portrait photo courtesy Mary Uyematsu.

  • Artwork by Karen Tei Yamashita
    I Hotel, 2010; photo credit the artist
Artwork by Karen Tei Yamashita