MONKEY Vol. 6: Horror
Friday, May 15 at 5:30pm at Kinokuniya New York
Join us at Kinokuniya New York on Friday, May 15 at 5:30 PM for MONKEY Vol. 6 Horror, an evening exploring the strange, uncanny, and unforgettable worlds of contemporary Japanese horror literature!
Don’t miss a literary discussion with authors Hideo Furukawa and Tomoka Shibasaki, translators Ted Goossen and Kendall Heitzman, MONKEY contributing editor Roland Kelts, and MONKEY founder Motoyuki Shibata, followed by a Q&A and book signing!
Participants
Hideo Furukawa is one of the most innovative writers in Japan today. His novel Belka, Why Don’t You Bark? was translated by Michael Emmerich; his partly fictional reportage Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure: A Tale That Begins with Fukushima was translated by Doug Slaymaker with Akiko Takenaka; and his short novel Slow Boat was translated by David Boyd. He has received the Noma New Face Prize, Mystery Writers of Japan Award, the Japan SF Grand Prize, and the Yukio Mishima Award. After translating the medieval classic The Tale of the Heike into modern Japanese, he published The Tale of the Heike: The Inu-Oh Chapters in 2017. Inu-Oh, the animated musical film based on the novel, directed by Masaaki Yuasa, was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 2023 Golden Globes. The English translation by Kendall Heitzman will be published under the Monkey imprint in 2027.
Tomoka Shibasaki is a novelist, short story writer, and essayist. She published her debut in 2000 when she was 27; it was adapted by Isao Yukisada and released as a film in 2004 (A Day on the Planet). Her 2007 novel Sono machi no ima wa (That Town Today) was awarded the Geijutsu Sensho Newcomers Prize, the Sakunosuke Oda Award, and the Sakuya Konohana Award. In 2010, her novel Awake or Asleep received the Noma New Face Prize; it was adapted into the film Asako I & II by Ryusuke Hamaguchi and screened at Cannes. Shibasaki won the Akutagawa Prize in 2014 for Spring Garden, translated into English by Polly Barton. Her groundbreaking short story collection A Hundred Years and a Day, also translated by Polly Barton, was published under the Monkey imprint with Stone Bridge Press in 2025. In 2026 Shibasaki won the Yomiuri Literary Prize for her 2025 novel Kaerenai Tantei (The Detective Who Couldn’t Go Home).
Ted Goossen is a literary translator, professor emeritus at York University in Toronto, and one of the founding editors of Monkey Business and MONKEY New Writing from Japan. He is the editor of The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories. He translated Haruki Murakami’s Wind/Pinball and The Strange Library, and co-translated (with Philip Gabriel) Men Without Women and Killing Commendatore. His translations of Hiromi Kawakami’s People from My Neighborhood and Naoya Shiga’s Reconciliation were published in 2020. His translation of the story collection Dragon Palace by Hiromi Kawakami was published under the Monkey imprint with Stone Bridge Press in 2023. His translations of Murakami, Shiga, Kawakami, and others are featured in Monkey Business and MONKEY.
Kendall Heitzman is an associate professor of Japanese literature and culture at the University of Iowa. He has translated stories by Kotomi Li and Nori Nakagami, among others. Heitzman is the author of Enduring Postwar: Yasuoka Shōtarō and Literary Memory in Japan (Vanderbilt University Press, 2019). His translation of Kaori Fujino’s Nails and Eyes was published by Pushkin Press in 2023 and won the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize. His translations of the work of Hideo Furukawa appear in MONKEY, vols. 3–6. His translation of The Tale of the Heike: The Inu-oh Chapters will be published under the Monkey imprint in 2027.
Roland Nozomu Kelts is a contributing editor to MONKEY New Writing from Japan. An award-winning journalist and the author of Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has Invaded the US and The Art of Blade Runner: Black Lotus, he writes for publications in the US, Japan, and Europe, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, among others, and has contributed to several book-length collections. He was a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University and teaches at Waseda University in Tokyo. He is currently filming a documentary about manga pioneer Osamu Tezuka.
Motoyuki Shibata translates American literature and runs the Japanese literary journal MONKEY and its offspring, MONKEY New Writing from Japan. He has translated Paul Auster, Rebecca Brown, Stuart Dybek, Brian Evenson, Laird Hunt, Kelly Link, and Steven Millhauser, among many others. Recent translations include Paul Auster’s 4321, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll. He is professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo.
Synopsis
MONKEY New Writing from Japan is an annual anthology that showcases the best of contemporary Japanese literature. Vol. 6 celebrates HORROR, from demons and ghosts to the myriad existential and environmental fears that come with living in our troubled times. MONKEY offers short fiction and poetry by writers such as Haruki Murakami, Yoko Ogawa, and Hiromi Kawakami; graphic stories by Satoshi Kitamura; new translations of modern classics; and contributions from authors outside Japan.