Photo by Malika Danae Photography
Akemi Johnson is the author of Night in the American Village: Women in the Shadow of the U.S. Military Bases in Okinawa, which was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing.
She is currently at work on a second book, to be published by One Signal, about the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans and Tule Lake concentration camp, where her grandfather renounced his U.S. citizenship, along with more than 5,000 others.
Akemi has also written for The New York Times, The Nation, NPR’s Code Switch, The Washington Post, Travel + Leisure, and other publications. She has been the recipient of a Fulbright grant to Japan, the James D. Phelan Award from the San Francisco Foundation, and residencies at Mesa Refuge and Playa.
Akemi earned an MFA in fiction writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and an AB in East Asian Studies from Brown University. She has taught writing at the George Washington University, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and the University of Iowa. She lives with her family in Northern California,