Written by: Madeline Slack
TOKYO has a little bit of everything. It opens with a comic report from a Japanese executive talking about fish he just acquired. If this isn’t interesting enough, there are two Japanese-American wives and an American author involved as well. Things go sideways when the author starts investigating the executive’s fishy report assisted by a man the author suspects to be his wife’s former lover.
Right there, you have a love triangle, intrigue and high stakes in a foreign city. TOKYO will also explore Japanese culture and a series of fringe issues such as gender-bending, disease and monstrousness. Intrigued yet?
Michael Mejia is a professor of creative writing at the University of Utah. A recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, he spends his free time as editor-in-chief of Western Humanities Review and co-founding editor of Ninebark Press. He has been published several times in anthologies and journals for both fiction and non-fiction writing. This is his sophomore effort after his first text, Forgetfulness. But don’t expect it to be a sequel; they are standalone stories.
He will be reading at 7 p.m. this Thursday, April 12 at Mandate Press (1077 South Main St., Salt Lake City). After the reading, Mejia will do a book signing. You can purchase a copy of TOKYO at The King’s English Bookshop, which will be on-site at Mandate Press.
