Leslie Shimotakahara is a fourth-generation Japanese-Canadian writer, who resides in Toronto. Leslie holds a B.A. in English from McGill and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Brown in Modern American Literature. Her first book, a memoir called The Reading List, won the Canada-Japan Literary Prize in 2012, and her fiction has been shortlisted for the KM Hunter Artist Award. Leslie’s debut novel, After the Bloom, explores the Japanese internment and its aftermath, drawing upon her family history; the novel received a starred review from Booklist. Her more recent novel, Red Oblivion, is a literary thriller set in Hong Kong, inspired by the time she spent living there with her Chinese-Canadian husband and his elderly father. Red Oblivion was praised by Kirkus Review for showing “virtuosity in this subtle deconstruction of one family’s tainted origins.”
