Ruth Ozeki's Blog
October 5, 2013
On Zen Nuns & Novelists
“Usually people who do bad things make good writers. I did a lot of bad things, which is why my novels are interesting.” ~Jakucho Setouchi, novelist-turned-Buddhist nun Jakucho Setouchi is one of my heroes, and she made this comment during an interview with Reuters back in 2008, when she was eighty five years old. Here are some of the reasons [...]
August 4, 2013
ghosts
I just remembered an essay I wrote for the New York Times back in August of 2004, and since it’s August all over again, I thought I would repost it here. The memory of this summer when I was seven, visiting my grandmother in Japan for the first time, is the source of the scenes [...]
July 26, 2013
On Bookers, Booksellers & The Bookshop Band
On Tuesday morning, I sat down at my computer to find my inbox flooded with the loveliest messages of congratulations. It took me a while to figure out why. My well-wishers seemed to think that A Tale for the Time Being had been longlisted for the Booker Prize, but I figured it must be a mistake. Only [...]
March 11, 2013
March 9, 2013
London Interactive
Just got back a short five-day visit to London, where I went to support the launch of the UK edition of A Tale for the Time Being. Canongate, my wonderful UK publisher, is doing the most amazing, cutting-edge stuff with the publication and generating all sorts of buzz in the London book world. The hardcover is a beautiful, [...]
March 1, 2013
waiting…
Dear friends, Much has been happening these past few weeks in preparation for the launch of A Tale for the Time Being, and it’s been a real team effort! My friend & fellow filmmaker Bill Weaver and I shot a book trailer up on Cortes, with the backdrop of the brooding Pacific Northwest landscape [...]
February 24, 2013
Everything’s up to date in Kansas City…
Everything’s up to date in Kansas City They gone about as fer as they can go They went an’ built a skyscraper seven stories high About as high as a buildin’ orta grow. Winter Institute – Kansas City, MO. Just about to head down to the Century Ballroom to the gathering of my tribe—booksellers and [...]
January 30, 2013
Life is tough…and transient
Shambhala Sun just sent me the pdf of Norman Fischer’s article, Life is Tough – 6 ways to deal with it, from the March issue of the magazine, so I thought I’d share it here. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, it’s a great article about the Lojong slogans, and his book, Training in Compassion, which [...]
January 29, 2013
Nothing is Wasted
Here’s an article I wrote for the March issue of Shambhala Sun Magazine about turning problems into art. When you’re a writer or an artist, nothing is wasted. Even the most painful and difficult situations in life can be recycled into material for a project, and it’s the artist’s job to be awake, aware, and opportunistic. This [...]
January 17, 2013
ALA panel & some thoughts on libraries
On Friday, January 25, from 4:00 – 5:15 pm, I’ll be on a panel at the American Library Association’s Midwinter meet-up to discuss the topic “The Novel is Alive and Well” with Seattle authors Terry Brooks, Ivan Doig, and Gregg Olsen. I’m looking forward to this because I love librarians, I have always wanted to be one, [...]
