This blog was originally created to publicize my novel AMERICAN FUJI published in 2001 with a reissue in 2009. Now, I am all about poetry and I use this blog to show where you can read my poems.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Norton Island Residency
I am so honored--and lucky--to have been awarded a Norton Island Residency this coming July! Norton Island is a 150-acre wilderness preserve north of Bar Harbor, Maine. What a beautiful place and opportunity to focus only on my novel in progress.
My first full-length book of poetry, available from Flowstone Press or Amazon.
Scavenger Hunt
Chapbook available from Dancing Girl Press
Bicycle Lotus
Chapbook, winner of the 2015 Turtle Island Quarterly Chapbook Contest, available from Left Fork
About American Fuji
Sara Backer
Most Americans who move to Japan are already in love with their idea of Japan. My feelings were neutral. I had a fresh graduate degree and jobs for English majors were scarce. I was lucky to get a prestigious Visiting Professorship at a national Japanese university and I was up for adventure. I didn't know I would be the first woman and the first American to hold that job. I was in for more groundbreaking than I imagined, but while Japan's invisible expectations were stressful, my students made my job the most fulfilling one I've had. I wanted to show aspects of Japan I hadn't found in books written by men (who experience an entirely different culture), but I didn't want to add to the cliche genre of personal memoir about gaijin in Asia. Fiction was the way I could show the humor and charm of a country that seems crazy and frustrating to a Western ex-pat. This blog explains how my actual experience informed my novel.
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