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About the author
Yumiko Tsumura was born and raised in the village of Takara by the Pacific Ocean on the Hidaka Plain, in Wakayama Prefecture on the Kii Penishula. She is a graduate of Kwansei Gakuin University with a BA and MA in literature. She has taught American Literature at Baika Women's College in Osaka, and Japanese language, culture and Shodo brush writing at colleges in the SF Bay area. She has an MFA in poetry and translation from the University of Iowa Writers workshop. Her poems have appeared in anthologies and journals, including Kyoto Journal, Kanto Poetry, Eastlit, Manoa and Wisconsin Review. Her book of early poems The Green Scream was published by Quixote Press. Woman of March is a book of her selected poems, a spiritual snapshots of her path.
She has been a translator of modern Japanese poetry and prose. Her books of translation with Samuel Grolmes include Tamura Ryuichi Poems 1946 -1998 (CCC Books), Kazuko Shiraishi's Let Those Who Appear and My Floating Mother, City (New Directions). Her translation of the collected poems of Kazuko Shiraishi Sea, Land, Shadow is forthcoming from New Directions in 2017.
She has been a longtime member of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) and has contributed in the field of modern Japanese literature. She lives in Palo Alto, California.
