Hiromi Goto is a Japanese-Canadian writer. She is an active member of the literary community, a writing instructor, and editor as well.
Background
Hiromi Goto was born on December 31, 1966, in Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture, Japan. She is the daughter of mushroom farmers Toranobu and Kyoko Goto. The family immigrated to Canada in 1969. They had lived on the west coast of British Columbia for 8 years, before moving to Nanton, Alberta, Canada.
The different Canadian settings of her childhood influenced Hiromi Goto's writing, as did her Japanese origins. Goto's 80-year-old grandmother told her Japanese tales when she was growing up. The old stories of life in Japan that Goto's father related sometimes featured ghosts or folk creatures.
Education
Hiromi Goto was graduated from the University of Calgary with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1989. There she received creative writing instruction from Aritha Van Herk and Fred Wah.
Career
Before starting her writing career Hiromi Goto worked as a guest lecturer at the University of Calgary and at Alberta College of Art from 1992 till 1995. In the summer of 1993 and 1994, she was an organizer and administrator at Crowsnest Writers Retreat and Workshop.
Goto wrote her first novel Chorus of Mushrooms in 1994. It has been released in Israel, Italy, and the United Kingdom.
Then, in 1995, she was a facilitator at the National Association of Japanese Canadians Summer Youth Camp. At the Women of Colour Collective of Calgary Creative Writing Workshops for Aboriginal Women and Women of Colour in 1998 she also served as a facilitator.
Hiromi Goto's short stories and poetry have been widely published in literary journals and anthologies. Further, some books were published including The Water of Possibility and The Kappa Child, Hopeful Monsters, Half World, and Darkest Light.
Goto has been the Writer-in-Residence for numerous institutions, including Athabasca University, the University of Alberta, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver Public Library and Vancouver's Emily Carr University of Art and Design. She was the co-Guest of Honor of the 2014 WisCon science fiction convention in Madison, Wisconsin, where she gave a well-received speech on her experiences as a writer.
Her first graphic novel, Shadow Life, with artist Celine Loup, was published in 2018 with First Second Books.
Besides this, Hiromi Goto worked as a creative writing instructor, editor, landscaping laborer, pesticides crew for Parks and Rec, delivery person, mushroom-picker.
Views
Quotations:
"My job as a writer is to take these experiences from geographical moving and shape them for a specific effect, though it goes without saying that what I'd intended may be a long route to something else altogether."
"Reading about folk creatures, ghosts, and monsters from cultures all over the world provides much mulch for a writer's imagination."
Membership
Hiromi Goto was a member of Calgary Minquon Panchayat (1993-1995), Women of Colour Collective of Calgary, Writer’s Union of Canada (co-chair of Racial Minority Writers Committee in 1995-1997), Calgary Board of Education Steering Committee on the Diversity and Systemic Change Process (1996-1997), co-chair of the Racial Minority Writers Committee of the Writers’ Union of Canada (1996-1997), a member of the Joint Calgary Board of Education and Community Committee on Equity and Discrimination (2000-2001) and a jury member for many grants and awards, both regionally and nationally.
Connections
Hiromi Goto is married and has a child.