Press Kit
Basho
Matsuo Basho (1644 -1694) is the Japanese poet commonly credited with transforming the haiku into a serious poetic genre. What eventually became the haiku (then called hokku) began as the first stanza of a renga, a longer, collaborative form that was more of a literary parler game at the time. Basho elevated the haiku into a legitimate standalone poem that could be written solely for art's sake.
Basho struggled all his life with issues of spirtuality and contentment. He moved to a hut outside the capital city of Edo (now Tokyo) for a more reclusive life, but after a one year span in which the hut burned down and his mother died, Basho turned to a wayfaring life, making five great journeys across Japan and recording them in travelogues that combined prose and haiku and that stand among the great works of Japanese literature.
Basho's Haiku Journeys is based on those travelogues.
Freeman Ng
Author Freeman Ng is a former Google software engineer who is now writing full time. He first became interested in haiku in 2010, when he began a daily haiku practice that ended up lasting five years.
Freeman is also the author of Who Am I?, a personalizable picture book, The House We Sheltered In, a freely downloadable and home-printable mini pandemic picture book, and Haiku Diem 1, a collection of the best haiku from the first year of his daily haiku writing, illustrated with his own digital art.
Freeman' other books and projects can be found through his website: www.AuthorFreeman.com and he can be contacted at contact@AuthorFreeman.com.
Cassandra Rockwood Ghanem
Illustrator Cassandra Rockwood Ghanem is a San Francisco Bay Area-based poet, illustrator, and educator. Her award-winning visual art has been exhibited in journals and galleries throughout the United States and beyond.
Her poems and creative nonfiction have been published in The New Delta Review, Rip Rap, Hawaii Review, The Lifted Brow, For Women Who Roar, The Write Launch, and elsewhere. Cassandra holds a BA from California Institute of Integral Studies and an MFA from California College of the Arts.
www.cassandrarockwoodghanem.com
Stone Bridge Press
Publisher Stone Bridge Press is a Berkeley, California, publisher that has been producing Japan-related content since 1989 in the belief that “Japan offers tremendous opportunities for re-examining Western values and for connecting with an emerging global culture increasingly centered on the Pacific Rim.”
One of the other books in Stone Bridge's list is a translation of Basho's final and most famous travelogue.
Galleys, permissions, and distribution
Electronic galleys are available on NetGalley and Edelweiss.
Permission is granted to reproduce the book cover or any of the sample pages found on this site. For other text or images, contact the publisher.
Distributed by Consortium, Baker & Taylor, Ingram, and other major wholesalers.
Poetry/Biography & Autobiography/History
Print ISBN: 9781611720693
eBook ISBN: 9781611729511
$16.95 Print / $9.95 Digital | 40 pages | Trim 8" x 10"
Format: Paperback / softback
