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Born in New Haven, Connecticut on March 12, 1956, Japanese American novelist and documentary filmmaker Ruth Ozeki is the daughter of anthropologist Floyd Lounsbury. She is married to Canadian land artist Oliver Kellhammer and the couple divides their time between New York City and Cortes Island, BC.
Her first novel My Year of Meats (Viking, 1999) was written mainly in Vancouver. It's the story of an independent-minded Japanese-American TV producer, Jane, who reluctantly teams up with a tradition-bound Tokyo housewife, Akiko, to produce a cooking series for Japanese television. Ozeki mostly wrote the novel while living in a rented apartment just off Hastings Street in 1996. "Outside, in front of the house," she recalled, "our Chinese landlord grew rotation crops of bok choy, gailan, and lo bok in the tiny garden that, in kinder economic times, had once been lawn. In back, in the alley right outside my office window, teenage prostitutes from the prairie provinces gave blow jobs to out-of-work loggers and shot needles of heroin, fresh off the boats from Asia, into the veins on their necks. From time to time a truck loaded with cages of chickens bound for the processing plant down the alley would clatter by, filling the narrow street with white feathers that drifted like snow onto the dazed girls. The sweet scent of the slaughterhouse thickened the air. At the end of the year, I finished writing. The result was My Year of Meats." It received the third annual, $30,000 Kiriyama Prize for best work of fiction in the Pacific Rim.
Her second book All Over Creation (Viking, 2003) is about a prodigal Japanese American daughter who returns to Idaho. Yumi Fuller, nicknamed 'Yummy,' returns to a family farm she fled twenty-five years ago. As a single mother of three she faces her dying father and her mother with Alzheimer's. Then along comes Yumi's former lover and high school teacher--now a spin-doctor for agribusiness, as well as the Seeds of Resistance, a food activist group. Both of Ozeki's first two novels concern modern attitudes towards food and health.
Stretching from Tokyo to Desolation Sound, Ruth Ozeki's third novel, A Tale for the Time Being (Viking, 2013) is about a teenage Japanese girl's diary, discovered by a woman on the West Coast of Canada when it is washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox, and how two people who will never meet can be deeply connected. Bullied at school in Tokyo, upset by her unemployed and suicidal father, Nao loves her 104-year-old great-grandmother, a feisty Buddhist nun. Featured in the New York Times, the novel has been described as both a mystery and a meditation.
The Book of Form and Emptiness (Viking, 2021) features thirteen-year-old Benny Oh who starts to hear the objects and books in his house talk to him a year after his father dies. Ignoring the voices doesn’t work and Benny seeks solace in a public library. There, he meets and falls in love with a street artist who uses the library as her performance space. Benny also encounters a homeless philosopher-poet who encourages Benny to find his own voice. And Benny meets “his very own Book” – another talking object – that narrates Benny’s life and teaches him to listen to things that matter. Ozeki won the 2022 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize for The Book of Form and Emptiness as well as the UK-based Women’s Prize for Fiction, worth 30,000 pounds.
BOOKS:
My Year of Meats (Viking, 1999) -Novel
All Over Creation (Viking, 2003) - Novel
A Tale for the Time Being (Viking, 2013) $28.95 978067002663 - Novel
The Face: A Time Code (Restless Books, 2016) US $12.99 9781632060525 - Autobiography
The Book of Form and Emptiness (Viking, 2021) $18 9780399563645 - Novel
[BCBW 2022] "Fiction" "Japanese"
Her first novel My Year of Meats (Viking, 1999) was written mainly in Vancouver. It's the story of an independent-minded Japanese-American TV producer, Jane, who reluctantly teams up with a tradition-bound Tokyo housewife, Akiko, to produce a cooking series for Japanese television. Ozeki mostly wrote the novel while living in a rented apartment just off Hastings Street in 1996. "Outside, in front of the house," she recalled, "our Chinese landlord grew rotation crops of bok choy, gailan, and lo bok in the tiny garden that, in kinder economic times, had once been lawn. In back, in the alley right outside my office window, teenage prostitutes from the prairie provinces gave blow jobs to out-of-work loggers and shot needles of heroin, fresh off the boats from Asia, into the veins on their necks. From time to time a truck loaded with cages of chickens bound for the processing plant down the alley would clatter by, filling the narrow street with white feathers that drifted like snow onto the dazed girls. The sweet scent of the slaughterhouse thickened the air. At the end of the year, I finished writing. The result was My Year of Meats." It received the third annual, $30,000 Kiriyama Prize for best work of fiction in the Pacific Rim.
Her second book All Over Creation (Viking, 2003) is about a prodigal Japanese American daughter who returns to Idaho. Yumi Fuller, nicknamed 'Yummy,' returns to a family farm she fled twenty-five years ago. As a single mother of three she faces her dying father and her mother with Alzheimer's. Then along comes Yumi's former lover and high school teacher--now a spin-doctor for agribusiness, as well as the Seeds of Resistance, a food activist group. Both of Ozeki's first two novels concern modern attitudes towards food and health.
Stretching from Tokyo to Desolation Sound, Ruth Ozeki's third novel, A Tale for the Time Being (Viking, 2013) is about a teenage Japanese girl's diary, discovered by a woman on the West Coast of Canada when it is washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox, and how two people who will never meet can be deeply connected. Bullied at school in Tokyo, upset by her unemployed and suicidal father, Nao loves her 104-year-old great-grandmother, a feisty Buddhist nun. Featured in the New York Times, the novel has been described as both a mystery and a meditation.
The Book of Form and Emptiness (Viking, 2021) features thirteen-year-old Benny Oh who starts to hear the objects and books in his house talk to him a year after his father dies. Ignoring the voices doesn’t work and Benny seeks solace in a public library. There, he meets and falls in love with a street artist who uses the library as her performance space. Benny also encounters a homeless philosopher-poet who encourages Benny to find his own voice. And Benny meets “his very own Book” – another talking object – that narrates Benny’s life and teaches him to listen to things that matter. Ozeki won the 2022 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize for The Book of Form and Emptiness as well as the UK-based Women’s Prize for Fiction, worth 30,000 pounds.
BOOKS:
My Year of Meats (Viking, 1999) -Novel
All Over Creation (Viking, 2003) - Novel
A Tale for the Time Being (Viking, 2013) $28.95 978067002663 - Novel
The Face: A Time Code (Restless Books, 2016) US $12.99 9781632060525 - Autobiography
The Book of Form and Emptiness (Viking, 2021) $18 9780399563645 - Novel
[BCBW 2022] "Fiction" "Japanese"
