Hiromi Goto is an award-winning author whose short stories and critical writing have appeared in Ms. magazine, Nature, and the Oxford University Press anthology, Making A Difference. Her most recent book, Hopeful Monsters, is a collection of short stories released with Arsenal Pulp Press. Her first novel, Chorus of Mushrooms, was the 1995 recipient of the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize Best First Book Canada and Caribbean Region and the co-winner of the Canada-Japan Book Award. Hiromi’s second novel, The Kappa Child, won the 2001 James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award and was short-listed for the regional Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, Best Book Award, the Sunburst Award and the Spectrum Award. She has also co-written and performed a criticomical introspection on race, representation, queer identities and popular culture with David Bateman entitled “The Cowboy & the Geisha”. This performance was showcased in Victoria, BC, sponsored by Uvic’s Queer and Trans Studies Research Collective and the Centre for Innovation in Culture and the Arts in Canada. Her latest young adult novel, Half World, will be published by Penguin Canada in 2009. She is currently the Writer-in-Residence at the Vancouver Public Library.