2011 Alumna
Cottage: Waterfall
BIO: Rahna Reiko Rizzuto’s three books include Shadow Child, a mystery/family/saga/historical novel set in Hawaii, New York and Japan; her memoir, Hiroshima in the Morning, which moves from the original “Ground Zero” to its echo, the 9/11 terrorist attacks; and her first novel, Why She Left Us, about the Japanese American incarceration camps. She was also Associate Editor of The NuyorAsian Anthology: Asian American Writings About New York City. Her awards and recognitions include an American Book Award, Grub Street National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Finalist, Asian American Literary Award Finalist, Dayton Literary Peace Prize Nominee, among others. She is a recipient of the U.S./Japan Creative Artist Fellowship, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. She has been interviewed widely on motherhood including on The Today Show, 20/20, and The View. Reiko’s articles on motherhood, Hiroshima, the Japanese incarceration camps and radiation poisoning have been published globally, including in the L.A. Times, Guardian UK, CNN Opinion, and Salon, and through the Progressive Media Project and The Huffington Post, and have been anthologized in Mothers Who Think, Because I Said So, Topography of War, and Alchemy of the Word, among others. She was a judge for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction in 2015. Reiko has mentored creative writers in a variety of settings: she was a Professor in the Goddard College Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing for 17 years; the founder of the Pele’s Fire writing retreat in Hawaii and the Two Trees Writers Collaborative; has been a guest artist for Writing on Water; and, as a Hedgebrook alumna, she has taught master classes and at Vortext. She is “hapa” (mixed Japanese/Caucasian) and was raised in Hawaii.