Gerry Shikatani is a poet, food critic, and interdisciplinary artist. Born and raised in Toronto, he has lived in Montreal and Paris, France, and travelled extensively in Europe and more recently Japan. His literary works include AQUEDUCT: poems and texts from Europe, and co-editing Paper Doors (1981), an anthology of Japanese Canadian poetry, with David Aylward, an important text in bringing Asian Canadian writers to the notice of academics and the general Canadian public.
Shikatani speaks English, Japanese, French, and Spanish, and in 2009 was decorated with the Cross of the Order of Civilian Merit by King Carlos I of Spain for his writings on Spanish food and culture. Currently, he is writing a literary work niwa, set in gardens in Japan, which is part of a conceptual chain with a number of other garden-inspired works beginning as early as 1996. He is currently based in Ontario and Spain, and increasingly devotes time to being a mentor/coach to other writers. He is also founder and director of the Lorca’s Granada: writers’ retreat, colloquia and workshops, set in the city that was home to the poet and dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca.
