James Masao Mitsui

James Masao Mitsui, a Nisei (second generation) Japanese American, was born in Skykomish, Washington where his father worked on the Great Northern Railroad. He spent two of his early years in the Tule Lake Relocation Camp. He went to high school in Odessa, Washington, a wheat-farming community. He earned a B.A. in Education from Eastern Washington University, and B.A. and M.A. in English from the University of Washington. His poetry collections include From a Three-Cornered World: New and Selected Poems, (1997); After the Long Train: Poems, (1986); Crossing the Phantom River, (1978 ); and Journal of the Sun, (1974).

Gail Tsukiyama

Gail Tsukiyama was born in San Francisco, California to a Chinese mother from Hong Kong and a Japanese father from Hawaii. She attended San Francisco State University and has been the recipient of the Academy of American Poets Award and the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award. A resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, she has taught creative writing at San Francisco State University and the University of California, Berkeley. She has been a freelance book reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle and sat as a judge for the Kiriyama Book Prize. She is currently Book Review Editor for the online magazine Pacific Rim Voices. Her novels include The Samurai's Garden, The Language of Threads, and Dreaming Water. She has finished a new novel that will be released in 2007.