Leza Lowitz

Leza Lowitz is a native Californian who lives in Tokyo, where she writes and runs a yoga studio. She's been bringing together the worlds of writing and spirituality for over two decades, charting her quest in 18 books across genres--Young Adult fiction, memoir, poetry, fiction, and co-translation. (Her book, "Yoga Poems: Lines to Unfold By" is an evergreen best-seller). She was a regular columnist for the Asahi Evening News, and has written for the Japan Times, the New York Times online, the Huffington Post, NPR's "Sound of Writing," NHK Radio Japan, KQED Radio's "Pacific Time," Asahi Weekly, Shambhala Sun, Yoga Journal, Yoga Journal Japan, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Oakland Tribune, and many more. In the early 1990s, she taught writing and literature at the University of Tokyo.

Her awards include the APALA Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature, a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award, the PEN Josephine Miles Award for Poetry, grants from the NEA, NEH, and the California Arts Council, the U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission Award from Columbia University for the Translation of Japanese Literature, and the Benjamin Franklin Award for Editorial Excellence. She often writes with her husband, the Middle Grade novelist Shogo Oketani.

Building a bridge from East to West, they've collaborated on a book about kanji for tattoos, a collection of poetry by a pacifist Japanese soldier, and a Young Adult trilogy about a young female ninja's quest to save her ancestral land. Other couples finish each other's sentences. They finish each other's books.