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Contributor

Jeffrey Angles

Portrait of Jeffrey Angles
Photo copyright © Dirk Skiba
Contributor

Jeffrey Angles

Jeffrey Angles (1971– ) is a poet, translator, and professor of Japanese literature at Western Michigan University. His collection of poetry Watashi no hizukehenkōsen (My International Date Line, 2016), which he wrote in Japanese, won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature, making him the first non-native speaker ever to win this award, comparable to a Pulitzer in the United States, for a book of poetry. In addition, he has published dozens of translations of Japan’s most important modern authors and poets, earning numerous prizes for his translation work. He believes strongly in the role of translators as activists, and much of his career has focused on the translation into English of socially engaged, feminist, or queer writers.

Articles by Jeffrey Angles

A hospital waiting room with green seats next to bright windows
Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash
Ito Returns to Japan and Finds Herself in a Real Pinch
By Hiromi Itō
Early the next morning, I got a call from Mom. The first words out of her mouth: Will you take me to the hospital today?
Translated from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles
In Praise of the Nude Body
By Mutsuo Takahashi
They’re as naked as the day they were born
Translated from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles
Gifts
By Mutsuo Takahashi
The wisdom gathered from those wanderings is far deeper / Than that of ancient Greece
Translated from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles
Roadkill
By Hiromi Itō
“Roadkill’s something you get used to seeing in America”
Translated from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles
Multilingual
Wheels
By Takako Arai
Perhaps she wanted her own fires to burn
Translated from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles
Multilingual
Mihama Nuclear Power Plant
Alpsdake, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Far Shore
By Yoko Tawada
In Yoko Tawada's dystopian tale, the entire Japanese archipelago is rendered uninhabitable when a fighter plane piloted by a teenager loses control and crashes into a recently reactivated nuclear plant.
Translated from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles
Noisy Animal
By Sayaka Ohsaki
Noisy animals can see Kafka’s castle in the valleys of the Musashino plain
Translated from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles
Do Not Tremble
By Toshiko Hirata
I did not know that the earth / Is an unruly cradle
Translated from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles
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