Bio:

Holly Thompson earned her M.A. from the New York University Creative Writing Program. Raised in New England and a longtime resident of Japan, she teaches creative and academic writing at Yokohama City University. Her YA verse novel Orchards (Delacorte/Random House, 2011) received the APALA 2012 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and is a YALSA 2012 Best Fiction for Young Adults title; Orchards explores the complexities of a 14-year-old girl's Japanese/Jewish-American identity during a summer spent with relatives in Japan after the suicide of a classmate. Holly is the editor of Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction--An Anthology of Japan Teen Stories (Stone Bridge Press, 2012), a collection of young adult fiction in prose, poetry and graphic narrative to benefit teens affected by the March 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami. Her picture book The Wakame Gatherers (Shen's Books, 2007) depicts a bicultural girl who goes wakame seaweed gathering with her Japanese and American grandmothers. Her novel Ash (Stone Bridge Press, 2001), set in Kagoshima and Kyoto, Japan, has been recommended as a teaching tool in high school and university classrooms studying Japan, Asia and intercultural issues. Her short stories have been published in magazines and journals in the United States and Japan, and she writes regularly for ANA's inflight magazine Wingspan. Holly Thompson serves as Regional Advisor of SCBWI Tokyo—the Tokyo chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.

Writer
PAL
Member since 2004
Region: Japan

Contact Information

Email:  hatbooks@gmail.com
Website:  http://www.hatbooks.com

Published In Children's Market: Yes
Available for Speaking Engagements? Yes