Rizzoli Bookstore welcomes the internationally renowned writer Yoko Tawada for a rare New York appearance, on the heels of the English publication of her novel Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel, translated by Susan Bernofsky, and the second installment in her beloved Scattered trilogy, Suggested in the Stars, translated by Margaret Mitsutani.
Tawada will be in conversation with Monique Truong followed by a signing. This evening is co-presented by PEN America and Japan Society.
RSVPs are encouraged but not required. This event is mixed seated/standing. Seating is limited and will be first come, first served. Doors open at 5:30 pm.
Can’t attend? Order your signed copy of Suggested in the Stars or Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel (please specify that you would like it signed in the comments box at checkout).
Participants
Yoko Tawada was born in Tokyo in 1960, moved to Hamburg when she was twenty-two, and then to Berlin in 2006. She writes in both Japanese and German, and has published several books—stories, novels, poems, plays, essays—in both languages. She has received numerous awards for her writing including the Akutagawa Prize, the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize, the Tanizaki Prize, the Kleist Prize, the Goethe Medal, and the National Book Award. New Directions publishes her story collections Where Europe Begins (with a Preface by Wim Wenders) and Facing the Bridge, as well her novels The Naked Eye, The Bridegroom Was a Dog, Memoirs of a Polar Bear, The Emissary, Scattered All over the Earth, Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel, Suggested in the Stars, and forthcoming in autumn 2025 is Archipelago of the Sun, the final novel in her Scattered trilogy.
Born in Saigon, South Vietnam (now Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam), Monique Truong came to the U.S. as a refugee in 1975. She’s a novelist, essayist, children’s book author, and librettist. Her novels are The Sweetest Fruits (Viking, 2019), Bitter in the Mouth (Random House, 2010), and the national bestseller The Book of Salt (Houghton Mifflin, 2003). Her children’s picture book Mai’s Áo Dài (Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books, 2025) is co-written with Thai Nguyen and illustrated by Dung Ho. With Barbara Tran and Khoi Luu, she co-edited Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry & Prose, 25th Anniversary Edition (Texas Tech University Press/DVAN Series, 2023). A graduate of Yale College and Columbia Law School, she’s the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Princeton University’s Hodder Fellowship, Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award, Bard Fiction Prize, and John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, among other honors.