Holly Thompson

Holly Thompson was raised in New England, earned a B.A. in biology from Mount Holyoke College and an M.A. in English (concentration creative writing/​fiction) from New York University's Creative Writing Program. Long-time resident of Japan, she is a lecturer at Yokohama City University, where she teaches creative writing, academic writing, short stories and American culture. Holly's fiction is often set in Japan. Her YA novel-in-verse Orchards (Delacorte/​Random House, 2011), received the 2012 APALA Asian/​Pacific American Award for Literature. In it, Kana, a half Japanese and half Jewish-American girl, is sent to spend the summer with Shizuoka relatives after the death of a classmate. Her novel Ash (Stone Bridge Press, 2001), set in Kagoshima and Kyoto, has been recommended as a teaching tool in high school and university classrooms studying Japan, Asia and intercultural issues. Her picture book The Wakame Gatherers (Shen's Books, 2007) depicts a bicultural girl who goes seaweed gathering with her Japanese and American grandmothers. Holly edited and wrote the foreword to Tomo: Friendship through Fiction--An Anthology of Japan Teen Fiction, a young adult anthology of Japan-related fiction to benefit teens in the earthquake- and tsunami-affected areas of Tohoku. Read about Tomo on the Tomo blog. Holly's short stories, poetry and articles have been published in magazines and journals in the United States and Japan and anthologized in The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan (Stone Bridge Press, 1997). She is a regular contributor to Wingspan, the ANA inflight magazine. Holly serves as Regional Advisor of the Tokyo chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI Tokyo).

Holly Thompson is represented by Jamie Weiss Chilton of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency.

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