Holly Thompson,
the author of ASH, grew up in New England and graduated from Mount
Holyoke College with a degree in biology. She'd not given Japan a
passing glance until she approached her husband-to-be in a Maine
island pub, intrigued by his footwear (geta) from his time
spent in Japan. After teaching science for two years, she made her
first move to Japan in 1983 and stayed three years--teaching
English, writing, and beginning her exploration of the less
traveled corners of the Japanese archipelago. She later received
her Masters degree from New York University's Creative Writing
Program and after settling in the New York area for a number of
years, uprooted and moved back to Japan with her husband and their
two children. Her articles on such Japanese cultural issues as
O-Bon festival rituals, tatami manufacturing, midwifery, and
wedding customs, as well as on historic travel destinations, have
appeared in magazines and newspapers in the United States and
Japan, and her short stories have been published in The Broken
Bridge anthology, Wingspan and various literary
magazines. Her fiction tends to explore differences of sensibility,
orientation and expression between Japanese and Americans and the
impact of cross-cultural stress on personal lives. Characters
include foreigners in Japan struggling to navigate a society
lacking familiar referents, Japanese in the United States
assimilating one moment and bowing to Japanese tradition the next,
and children of intercultural marriages coping with often opposing
identities. She currently teaches at Yokohama City University and
lives and writes in Kamakura.

Books by Holly Thompson

Ash

by Holly Thompson - Fiction