James Shea is an American writer and the author of two books of poetry, The Lost Novel and Star in the Eye. His poems have appeared in various literary magazines and anthologies such as The New Census: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry and Isn’t It Romantic: 100 Love Poems by Younger American Poets. A former Fulbright Scholar in Hong Kong, he is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing at Hong Kong Baptist University. Shea helped select the submissions in the "Writing Japan" Issue of Cha (June 2017). [Cha profile]

Kyoko Yoshida has a collection of short stories Disorientalism from Vagabond Press in Sydney, and her short story is included in the inaugural issue of Singapore's Books Actually Gold Standard 2016 anthology. She was born and raised in Fukuoka, studied in Kyoto and Milwaukee, and after thirteen years of teaching English in Yokohama and Tokyo, now teaches American Literature at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. She was a fellow at University of Iowa and Brown University. She writes fiction in English, translates Japanese poetry and drama into English, and translates American fiction into Japanese. Her latest translations include Dave Eggers’s A Hologram for the King and Gozo Yoshimasu’s Alice Iris Red Horse. Yoshida helped select the submissions in the "Writing Japan" Issue of Cha (June 2017). [Cha profile]