Leslie Shimotakahara

Leslie Shimotakahara‘s memoir, The Reading List, won the Canada-Japan Literary Prize, and her fiction has been shortlisted for the KM Hunter Artist Award. She has written two critically acclaimed novels, After the Bloom and Red Oblivion. After the Bloom received a starred review from Booklist and is Bustle’s number one choice in “50 Books To Read With Your Book Club,” while Kirkus Review praised Red Oblivion for displaying “virtuosity in this subtle deconstruction of one family’s tainted origins.” Her writing has appeared in the National Post, World Literature Today, and Changing the Face of Canadian Literature, among other anthologies and periodicals. Her next novel, Sisters of the Spruce, will be published in February 2024. She completed a PhD in English at Brown University. She and her husband live in Toronto’s west end.

Leslie is a Short Form 2009 mentee and worked with Emma Donoghue.