UPDATE: This event has passed, but the JETAA video is available below.

Summer is the perfect time to share my memoir, The Same Moon, because it’s the season when my story begins … the summer I turned 17 and fell for a handsome baseball player at a Japanese high school.

Eight years — and an early-life divorce — later, I returned to Japan on the Japan Exchange & Teaching Program. At the time, I saw it as a trap door, a way to escape my wrecked young-adult life in Minnesota. (Of course I also wondered what had become of that baseball player … )

What I found was a whole new life in an isolated rural area, where I was drawn into serving tea to my male coworkers, performing with a koto (zither) group, advocating for my female students and colleagues, and embarking on a controversial romance.

Join me for a virtual author event — including a reading, Q&A and the chance to win a copy of TSM — sponsored by the JET Program Alumni Association!

You can find the opening chapter and more information on The Same Moon here.

Click here to see the event announcement on Facebook.

(Btw, Camphor Press is offering 15 percent off purchases of The Same Moon when you sign up for my e-newsletter, “The Same Loon.” “TSL” flies every couple of weeks, sharing updates, good reads and writing prompts to help you tell your own story.)