Terry Watada
Location Toronto 43° 39' 53.93" N, 79° 26' 45.43" W Arts Literature Poetry Theatre Person Moderator
Terry Watada is a Toronto writer with many titles to his credit. His publications include The Sword, the Medal and the Rosary (a manga, HpF Press and the NAJC), The TBC: the Toronto Buddhist Church, 1995 - 2010, (non-fiction, HpF Press & the Toronto Buddhist Church 2010), Kuroshio: The Blood of Foxes, (novel, Arsenal Pulp Press 2007), Obon: the Festival of the Dead (poetry, Thistledown Press 2006), Ten Thousand Views of Rain (poetry, Thistledown Press 2001), Seeing the Invisible (a children’s biography, Umbrella Press 1998), Daruma Days (short fiction, Ronsdale Press 1997), Bukkyo Tozen: a History of Buddhism in Canada (non-fiction, HpF Press & the Toronto Buddhist Church 1996) and A Thousand Homes (poetry, Mercury Press 1995). Most books available on Amazon.
As a playwright, he has seen seven of his plays achieve mainstage production; his best known is perhaps Vincent, a play about a Toronto family dealing with a schizophrenic son. Workman Arts of Toronto has remounted it several times since its premiere in 1993. Most notably, it was produced at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa and the first and second Madness and Arts World Festival in Toronto and Muenster, Germany, respectively.
His essays have been published in such varied journals and books as Maclean's Magazine (March 2011), Canadian Literature (UBC), Ritsumeikan Hogaku “Kotoba to sonohirogari” (Ritsumeikan University Press, Kyoto Jpn), Crossing the Ocean: Japanese American Culture from Past to Present, Jimbun-shoin Press (Kyoto Jpn), and Anti-Asian Violence in North America (AltaMira Press, California). He wrote a monthly column in the Japanese-Canadian national journal the Nikkei Voice for 25 years. He now contributes a monthly column for the Vancouver JCCA Bulletin which expanded its scope to a national level in 2012.
He composed the Japanese-Canadian children’s history section and the Japanese, Chinese, and South-Asian Canadian history sections for the National Library and Archives of Canada websites.
Essays about his work have appeared in the International Journal of Canadian Studies, Modern Drama (UTP), and in Transcultural Reinventions: Asian American and Asian Canadian Short-Story Cycles (TSAR Publications).
Among his numerous citations and awards, he was presented with the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal and the NAJC National Merit Award recognizing his writing, his music and his community volunteerism in 2013. His archives which include records, tapes, and significant artifacts of the Asian North American experience have been collected as the Terry Watada Special Collection and housed in the East Asian Library and his manuscripts (drafts and final), personal papers and books have been housed in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, Robarts Library, University of Toronto.
He is awaiting the publication of his fourth collection of poetry – The Game of 100 Ghosts (TSAR Publications, Fall 2014) – and his second manga, Light at a Window (Toronto NAJC and HpF Press, Fall 2014).
He currently has a submission-ready manuscript of his second novel and a first draft of a third.
Terry is also a Senior Editor for the Ginger Post.