Bio

I have lived, taught, and written in Tokyo for twenty years, but I was born in Kansas City, a very different world from Tokyo. After graduating from Brown University in philosophy, I hit the road. I traveled around the world for two years working odd jobs, and finally went back to school. After an MA in Education, I got a call at 5 a.m. one morning from Beijing offering me a teaching position. I took it, and lived in Beijing for two years, teaching English, traveling the country, and writing.

I spent more time traveling, finishing a degree in Comparative Literature in Madison, Wisconsin, and a PhD in English at the University of Kent at Canterbury (on Dickens and film adaptation), and spent a lot of time writing. “Woodshedding,” jazz musicians would call it.

My first novel, The Last Train, was published in 2017 and the second, The Moving Blade, in 2018. Reviews and awards can be found on the other pages of this site. Tokyo Traffic came out in 2020 and the fourth in the series, Tokyo Zangyo, in summer 2021. Three more novels are planned in this Detective Hiroshi series of modern, Tokyo-set mysteries, as well as several standalones. I have published three award-winning collections of essays: Motions and Moments: More Essays on Tokyo (Raked Gravel Press 2015), Tokyo’s Mystery Deepens (Raked Gravel Press 2014), and Beauty and Chaos: Essays on Tokyo (Raked Gravel Press 2014). I have also published books in Japanese and three textbooks, one based on my Tokyo essays called Inbound/Outbound.

Over the years in Tokyo, I have written regular columns for many publications: The Japan Times, Newsweek Japan, Jazznin, ST Shukan, Jazz Colo[u]rs, and Artscape Japan. I currently run my own website Jazz in Japan (www.jazzinjapan.com). I also continue to publish academic articles and help run a conference on teaching literature (www.liberlit.com). It feels good, though, to now focus mainly on three genres–music, memoir, and murder.

I work as a professor of American Literature at Meiji Gakuin University and live with my wife, also a professor, in western Tokyo where we have a little Japanese-style garden. My seminars focus on contemporary novels and film adaptations, and I also teach American music, film, and art. After talking with my students about Jackson Pollock, Bessie Smith, or Kurt Vonnegut all day, I head out to wander through Tokyo. The contrasts, and confluences, always put ideas for writing into my head.

Write me at: michaelpronko@gmail.com