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  Rashomon - From their pens to...

  Ryunosuke Akutagawa

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  Ryūnosuke Niihara was born in Kyōbashi, Tokyo in Japan on the 1st March 1892.  Sadly, his mother suffered severe mental illness after his birth and so, at only eight months old, he was sent to be raised by his maternal uncle and aunt, from whom he received the Akutagawa family name.  
  He was fascinated by classical Chinese literature from his early years and began writing after entering what was then the Tokyo Imperial University in 1913 to study English Literature.   
  The following year Akutagawa and his friends revived the literary journal ‘New Currents of Thought’ which published their own works and translations of such icons as W B Yeats and Anatole France. 
  Akutagawa published "Rashōmon" in 1915 and whilst it was disliked by his friends everyone else knew better.  As other short stories followed so did his growing literary reputation as the father of the Japanese short story. 
  Much of his work reinterpreted former classical works and incidents and this, melded with his strong dislike of naturalism, produced a writer of rare and genuine quality.  His character palette featured strong and domineering women, mainly based on his mother and the aunt who helped raise him. 
  In 1921, he spent four months in China as a reporter.  Whilst there his health was compromised by several illnesses and both his physical and mental health spiralled downwards.  He began to suffer from hallucinations and dreaded that he might have inherited his mother’s mental disorders.  
  Although he survived one suicide attempt Ryūnosuke Akutagawa died on the 24th July 1927 in Tokyo from an overdose of Veronal, a barbiturate.  He was 35.

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  The Ghostly Kiss - From their...

  Lafcadio Hearn

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  Lafcadio Hearn was born on the 27th June 1850 on the Ionian isle of Levkás in Greece to a British Army officer and a Greek Mother. 
  His father, fearing for his career prospects at being married to a Greek Orthodox wife, sent them to Dublin whilst he continued to advance his career with further postings.  Life there was difficult for mother and son.  His father returned, wounded and traumatised, when Lafcadio was three.  He annulled the marriage and she remarried but had to give up care of Lafcadio to her sister-in law.   
  After brief periods for Catholic education in England and France he emigrated to Ohio in the United States when he was 19, taking on a series of casual jobs before embarking on a career as a journalist, publishing poems and essays in Cincinnati.  It was whilst here that he began a side-line in translating, starting with Gautier and Flaubert.  He married in 1874 to a 20 year old African-American woman in violation of Ohio's anti-miscegenation law.  The marriage soon failed. 
  In 1877 he relocated to New Orleans to write on a variety of themes before picking up a two year assignment from Harper’s to write in the West Indies, where he also wrote his first novel. 
  In 1890 Harper’s sent him to Japan.  Here he left journalism and took the remarkable decision to become a schoolteacher in the north of Japan.   Enraptured by the culture he was driven to explain it in various Western publications to those who had little, if any, knowledge of its culture.  Within the year he had fallen in love with, and married, a high-born Japanese lady, together they would have four children.   
  In 1895 he became a Japanese national and took the name Koizumi Yakumo, Koizumi being his wife’s family name. 
  The following few years, whilst a professor of Literature at the Imperial University of Japan, were his most creative and admired period.   
  Lafcadio Hearn died of heart failure on the 26th of September 1904, in Tokyo, Japan shortly before leaving to deliver a series of lectures at Cornell University in New York State.  He was 54.

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  The Homely Heroine

  Edna Ferber

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  Who ever heard of a plain and downright homely heroine? Isn't a heroine by definition beautiful? Well, Edna Ferber, in her well known style that later produced Show Boat and Giant, tells us about just such a heroine in the first of these four special short stories. They are special to me because of their insight into the deep courage and faith of 'ordinary' people, people like most of us. And of course our failings and frailties and sometimes, the prince does not marry the right person. The other stories are A Bush League Hero, What she Wore and The Man Who Came Back. (Summary by Phil Chenevert)

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  Entropic - Stories

  Mr. R.W. Gray

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  In his second collection of stories, author and filmmaker R.W. Gray (Crisp) once again finds the place where the beautiful, the strange, and the surreal all meet—sometimes meshing harmoniously, sometimes colliding with terrible violence, launching his characters into a redefined reality. A lovestruck man discovers the secret editing room where his girlfriend erases all her flaws; a massage artist finds that she can alleviate her clients’ pain in more ways than one; a beautiful man invites those who want him to do whatever they wish with his unconscious body; and a gay couple meets what appear to be the younger versions of themselves, and learns that history can indeed repeat itself.

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  Posing As People: Three Stories...

  Orson Scott Card, Scott Brick,...

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  Science fiction is rare in theatrical form, but with Posing As People, three unforgettable sci-fi stories by Orson Scott Card are adapted into powerful stage plays by three different writers. 
  “Clap Hands and Sing” shows us a lonely—but rich and powerful—old man who has only one wish before he dies: To go back in time and take an opportunity for love that he once let slip by. But what will it do to the young girl who used to love him? 
  “Lifeloop” pretends to be reality TV twenty-four hours a day. In fact, they’re really actors. But when your character is you, without any break, how exactly do you have a “real” life? And how can a fellow actor tell you that he loves you, when that’s what the script also calls for him to say? 
  “Sepulchre of Songs” is about a heartbreakingly lovely girl who lost her arms and legs many years ago, and now yearns to be free, not just of the rest home where she lives, but of her body. So is the alien being who wants to trade places with her real or the product of her own imagination? And can her therapist’s growing love for her keep her from fleeing—either into space or the dark recesses of her own mind?  
  Read by Eric Artell, Scott Brick, Emily Janice Card, Sara Ellis, Kirby Heybourne, Kelly Lohman, Stefan Rudnicki, Lara Schwartzberg, and Victoria Von Roth, the original cast of the stage production, September 21, 2004 at the Whitefire Theatre Los Angeles directed by Orson Scott Card.

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  English Folk Tales of Coast and Sea

  Lisa Schneidau

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  England is a maritime nation. Our folklore and history is peppered with tall tales of the high seas: mysteries of the great ocean, the unknown world beneath the surface of the salt sea, and the liminal coast where the sea-gods meet our lives on the land. 
  Here is a collection of traditional folk tales from the coasts and seas of England. Lisa Schneidau retells the old stories with a contemporary twist: dragons and monsters, sailor heroes and ghost ships, mermaids and shapeshifters. Immerse yourself in these salty sea stories, and learn about England’s heritage, magic and relationship to the mysterious ocean world that surrounds us.

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