Sequoia Nagamatsu

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Sequoia Nagamatsu

Goodreads Author


Born
in The United States
January 19, 1982

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Influences
Haruki Murakami, Kelly Link, Italo Calvino, J.G. Ballard, Jonathan Let ...more

Member Since
October 2010

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SEQUOIA NAGAMATSU is the author of the National Bestselling novel, HOW HIGH WE GO IN THE DARK (2022), a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and the story collection, WHERE WE GO WHEN ALL WE WERE IS GONE (2016). His work has appeared in publications such as Conjunctions, The Southern Review, ZYZZYVA, Tin House, Iowa Review, Lightspeed Magazine, and One World: A Global Anthology of Short Stories, and has been listed as notable in Best American Non-Required Reading and the Best Horror of the Year.

Other honors include a fellowship from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and shortlist inclusions for The Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, the Ursula K Le Guin Prize, and the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, as well as long list inclusions for the Andrew C
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Sequoia Nagamatsu Well, to some degree I don't really believe in writer's block. Writing will always be a journey of peaks and valleys. And those "low points" are often…moreWell, to some degree I don't really believe in writer's block. Writing will always be a journey of peaks and valleys. And those "low points" are often important periods for reflection, reading, and gaining perspective on what you've already done. When I'm in a valley, I read a lot. I watch films. And I work on other writing projects. (less)
Sequoia Nagamatsu I get to marry my imagination with the complexities of reality in a way that I hope illuminates universal/cultural/individual tensions for myself and …moreI get to marry my imagination with the complexities of reality in a way that I hope illuminates universal/cultural/individual tensions for myself and others. I have a background in anthropology, and writing has definitely fed this passion of trying to deconstruct identity, place, and community. Real talk: I get to surf YouTube and TVtropes.org and call it "research". (less)
Average rating: 3.81 · 74,540 ratings · 12,648 reviews · 12 distinct worksSimilar authors
How High We Go in the Dark

3.81 avg rating — 72,261 ratings — published 2022
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Where We Go When All We Wer...

3.71 avg rating — 1,582 ratings — published 2016 — 13 editions
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One World: A Global Antholo...

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3.97 avg rating — 684 ratings — published 2009 — 7 editions
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Lightspeed Magazine, Januar...

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3.56 avg rating — 55 ratings — published 2012
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Pig Son

4.64 avg rating — 33 ratings
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Fairy Tale Review, The Mauv...

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4.08 avg rating — 26 ratings — published 2015 — 2 editions
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Lightspeed Magazine, Issue ...

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really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 17 ratings — published 2021 — 2 editions
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The Songs of Your Decay (A ...

4.60 avg rating — 10 ratings
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Bat City Review

it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating
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Girl Zero

0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2015
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More books by Sequoia Nagamatsu…

Summer Giveaway begins July 4th

Win a signed copy of Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone, stories inspired by Japanese folklore and pop culture.
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...

“Sequoia Nagamatsu’s universe is one in which modern Japan and its ancient folklore play in the same delightful puddle. Creepy, unnerving, and full of heart, these tales of love and demons, death and Godzilla, loss and possibility, will creep into Read more of this blog post »
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Published on June 27, 2016 05:43 Tags: fabulism, fiction, giveaway, japan, magical-realism, story-collection

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Earth 7 by Deb Olin Unferth
Earth 7
by Deb Olin Unferth (Goodreads Author)
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Whidbey by T Kira Madden
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The Cloud Understands Our Scarecrow Hearts by Jonathan Travelstead
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Happy People Don't Live Here by Amber Sparks
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Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
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Waterline by Aram Mrjoian
Waterline
by Aram Mrjoian (Goodreads Author)
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This book may nod at the Armenian Genocide, but perhaps more notably this book takes the history of this event, the tales, pain, and truth of a patriarch who swam toward freedom and another life and embraces the waves and ripples from a swim toward s ...more
How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
"I have never enjoyed a short story collection until now. And I didn't just enjoy it. I ADORED it.

I talked everyone's ear off about this for a week while reading it. I begged other's to read it. As I'm begging you to read it. It's truly phenomenal.

Wa" Read more of this review »
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In Universes by Emet North
In Universes
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What Grows in the Dark by Jaq Evans
What Grows in the Dark
by Jaq Evans (Goodreads Author)
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We Lived on the Horizon by Erika Swyler
We Lived on the Horizon
by Erika Swyler (Goodreads Author)
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Kaleidoscopic and incisive in its themes, We Lived on the Horizon detonates the imperfect symbiosis between A.I. and what it means to be human. From class warfare and systems of oppression to reflections on gender and inherited privilege, Swyler burr ...more
More of Sequoia's books…
Quotes by Sequoia Nagamatsu  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“I saw a civilization that could destroy itself before it even reached the nearest star.”
Sequoia Nagamatsu, How High We Go in the Dark

“People have forgotten how to care for each other, for themselves. We can’t expect them to care about the world if they don’t care about what’s in front of them,”
Sequoia Nagamatsu, How High We Go in the Dark

“Opportunities are like little seeds floating in the wind. Your life is there. Some people have a big net to collect them all. Other people need to pray that the right seeds, the best ones, make their way to them with just enough bad ones to appreciate the good.”
Sequoia Nagamatsu, How High We Go in the Dark

Polls

330943
What would you like to read and discuss next? (Please don't vote unless you'll return to discuss!)

Vote for you favorite here, and we will choose the most popular selections for upcoming months. Feel free to make a comment as well to let us know what your second choice would be, as it could help me decide which books to include beyond the winner.

These will be starting in April (taking March off).


We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor
2016, 383 pages, 4.26 stars
$8.99 Kindle, $11+ print, should be at library



"Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street.

Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets. The stakes are high: no less than the first claim to entire worlds. If he declines the honor, he'll be switched off, and they'll try again with someone else. If he accepts, he becomes a prime target. There are at least three other countries trying to get their own probes launched first, and they play dirty.

The safest place for Bob is in space, heading away from Earth at top speed. Or so he thinks. Because the universe is full of nasties, and trespassers make them mad - very mad."
 
  15 votes, 34.9%

The Dead Next Door
2020, 278 pages, 4.28 stars
$5.99 Kindle, $15 print, not at library



"THE WORLD ENDS IN DAYS

First the bombings… cities crumble… infection spreads… Will is alone. His lakeside neighborhood has become a cemetery, the houses now tombstones.

THE DEAD ARE RISING

Out of the shadows, they creep… the streets, the woods, the lake… Will defends his home, his dogs, his sanctuary—but for how long?

THEIR NUMBERS ARE INCREASING

He must choose—complacency or the unknown… making irrevocable decisions that will lead to escape or demise… Will must overcome the odds and break the confines of…

THE DEAD NEXT DOOR"
 
  10 votes, 23.3%

Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
2006, 345 pages, 3.94 stars
$8.99 Kindle, $11+ print, should be at library



"A disease of unparalleled destructive force has sprung up almost simultaneously in every corner of the globe, all but destroying the human race. One survivor, strangely immune to the effects of the epidemic, ventures forward to experience a world without man. What he ultimately discovers will prove far more astonishing than anything he'd either dreaded or hoped for."
 
  8 votes, 18.6%

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
2022, 293 pages, 3.82 stars
$11.99 Kindle, print starting at $12.20, should be at library (put on hold now)



"Dr. Cliff Miyashiro arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue his recently deceased daughter's research, only to discover a virus, newly unearthed from melting permafrost. The plague unleashed reshapes life on earth for generations. Yet even while struggling to counter this destructive force, humanity stubbornly persists in myriad moving and ever inventive ways.

Among those adjusting to this new normal are an aspiring comedian, employed by a theme park designed for terminally ill children, who falls in love with a mother trying desperately to keep her son alive; a scientist who, having failed to save his own son from the plague, gets a second chance at fatherhood when one of his test subjects-a pig-develops human speech; a man who, after recovering from his own coma, plans a block party for his neighbours who have also woken up to find that they alone have survived their families; and a widowed painter and her teenaged granddaughter who must set off on cosmic quest to locate a new home planet."
 
  8 votes, 18.6%

The End of October by Lawrence Wright
2006, 345 pages, 3.94 stars
$7.99 Kindle, $9+ print, should be at library



"In this medical thriller Dr. Henry Parsons, an unlikely but appealing hero, races to find the origins and cure of a mysterious new killer virus as it brings the world to its knees.

At an internment camp in Indonesia, forty-seven people are pronounced dead with acute hemorrhagic fever. When Henry Parsons--microbiologist, epidemiologist--travels there on behalf of the World Health Organization to investigate, what he finds will soon have staggering repercussions across the globe: an infected man is on his way to join the millions of worshippers in the annual Hajj to Mecca. Now, Henry joins forces with a Saudi prince and doctor in an attempt to quarantine the entire host of pilgrims in the holy city... A Russian émigré, a woman who has risen to deputy director of U.S. Homeland Security, scrambles to mount a response to what may be an act of biowarfare... already-fraying global relations begin to snap, one by one, in the face of a pandemic... Henry's wife Jill and their children face diminishing odds of survival in Atlanta... and the disease slashes across the United States, dismantling institutions--scientific, religious, governmental--and decimating the population."
 
  2 votes, 4.7%

More...
“Let us suppose that someone is writing a story. From the world of conventional signs he takes an azalea bush, plants it in a pleasant park. He takes a gold pocket watch from the world of conventional signs and places it under the azalea bush. He takes from the same rich source a handsome thief and a chastity belt, places the thief in the chastity belt and lays him tenderly under the azalea, not neglecting to wind the gold pocket watch so that its ticking will, at length, awaken the now-sleeping thief. From the Sarah Lawrence campus he borrows a pair of seniors, Jacqueline and Jemima, and sets them to walking in the vicinity of the azalea bush and the handsome, chaste thief. Jacqueline and Jemima have just failed the Graduate Record Examination and are cursing God in colorful Sarah Lawrence language. What happens next? Of course, I don't know.”
Donald Barthelme, Not-Knowing: The Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme

56640 Connecting Readers and Writers — 3947 members — last activity Mar 18, 2026 11:30AM
We connect adventurous readers with Indie Authors. This group is about connecting writers with readers in a way that has not been done on Goodreads b ...more
75104 Japanophiles! — 348 members — last activity Nov 14, 2022 06:39AM
Do you love Japan? Want to learn about the culture and language? Then come join the Japanophiles! Here, we all love Japan and everything about it, and ...more
30527 Into the Forest — 2139 members — last activity 7 hours, 42 min ago
A group to discuss the fairy and folk tales, world mythologies, mythic fiction, magical realism fiction, and monsters. Of course, we also discuss rete ...more
26399 Book Giveaways — 5508 members — last activity Mar 28, 2026 01:14PM
The place to go to tell others about your book giveaways and contests. And where book lover's can go to find ways to get free books. We all love those ...more
2281 Magic Realism — 1036 members — last activity Jul 04, 2025 11:47AM
Magic realism is a global and varied mode of literature, from the early twentieth century European works which made the everyday seem magical, to the ...more
70018 Book Junkies — 1856 members — last activity Mar 13, 2026 09:20AM
A group for anyone with eclectic tastes. Really, we have no specific genre we like to adhere to. Join if you like to read anything and everything.
220 Goodreads Librarians Group — 319847 members — last activity 1 minute ago
Goodreads Librarians are volunteers who help ensure the accuracy of information about books and authors in the Goodreads' catalog. The Goodreads Libra ...more
58575 Advanced Copies for Review & Book Giveaways — 16184 members — last activity 22 hours, 37 min ago
A place to help authors and reviewers come together to get the word out about new books as well as a group for anyone to post or enter listings for bo ...more
622 Literary Prizes — 267 members — last activity Jul 08, 2012 07:00AM
A place to discuss the Booker, the Pulitzer, the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Newbery, and/or any other literary awards.
18702 J.G. Ballard — 206 members — last activity Dec 08, 2019 02:17PM
A group in honour of the late Jim Ballard, who pulled science fiction out of the adolescent male ghetto and gave us books full of beauty, excitement, ...more
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