Visiting Nonfiction Writer Mako Yoshikawa

Thursday, April 10, 2025 7:30 PM EDT
Fenwick Library, #2001

Mako Yoshikawa’s first novel, One Hundred and One Ways, was a national bestseller, and was translated into six languages. Her second novel, Once Removed, has also been translated. The novels have received critical acclaim and coverage in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Detroit News, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Time Out, among other publications.  Awards for Mako’s writing include a Bunting Fellowship and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant. Yoshikawa has a Ph.D. in American literature from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and as a literary critic, she has published articles that explore the relationship between incest and race.

After her father’s death in 2010, Mako began writing about him and their relationship: essays which have appeared in the Missouri Review, Southern Indiana Review, Harvard Review, Story, LitHub, Longreads, and Best American Essays. These essays became the basis for Secrets of the Sun, her first memoir, which was published in 2024 and was called “incandescent…gorgeous” by Booklist and “deeply felt, eloquent” by Michiko Kakutani.

Mako is a professor of creative writing and the MFA Program Director at Emerson College. She lives with her husband and two unruly cats in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is a professor and the director of the creative writing MFA program at Emerson College.