Illinois Authors

TUPELO PRESS, DORSET : 2021.

Educe Press 2016

People happily live…that is ideal; however, unwanted events happen—earthquakes, tsunami, cancer, brain surgery, unfilled love, or not making monthly rent. Naoko Fujimoto, a Japanese poet, adapted these scenes into first-person narratives in which ordinary people face these broken moments. This is captured in “Home, No Home.”

Glass Lyre Press 2017

In Silver Seasons of Heartache, Naoko Fujimoto walks a tightrope of language, making her way word by word across the chasm where hope can fall prey to heartbreak, the maybes and might‑bes of life transformed into what simply (and complicatedly) is. She is a poet of heart and humor, of insight and image. In carefully crafted yet conversational lines, Fujimoto describes the complications of our modern lives where “enough is never enough,” but where you also might still be lucky enough to stop and savor the moment when your “breath is quiet— / waiting to catch the last lightning bug.” —Matthew  Thorburn, author of Dear Almost Silver Seasons of Heartache is full of compelling poems that engage the senses as they navigate physical and emotional spaces: the kitchen, the family, the homeland, and the edges of this mysterious and precarious life. In "A Big Bowl of Beef Stew" she writes, "Past midnight, from the deepest forest, / a deer walked on weathered leaves." These are lovely poems, and Fujimoto's talent is the deep image. - Nancy Botkin

C&r Press [S.l.] : 2022

This poetry collection is a text collage about intergenerational war trauma: how my Japanese family lived through it and how we coped. This story was built from my two grandmothers' war experiences; though, the main characters are a woman narrator and her grandmother. They are celebrating Grandmother's birthday at a teppan-yaki restaurant (Japanese barbecue) and the story shifts between the present and World War II.

WILLOW Publishing, [Place of publication not identified] 2019.