Lynne Kutsukake

Lynne Kutsukake is a third-generation Japanese Canadian. She is a former librarian at the University of Toronto. Her short story “Mating,” originally published in The Dalhousie Review, was a finalist for the Journey Prize in 2010. The previous year, her short story “Away,” first published in Grain Magazine, was a finalist for the Journey Prize.

Fiction

The Translation of Love: A Novel

Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2016.
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Publisher’s Synopsis (from its website)

After spending the war years in a Canadian internment camp, thirteen-year-old Aya Shimamura and her father are faced with a gut-wrenching choice: move east of the Rocky Mountains or go “back” to Japan. Barred from returning home to the West Coast and bitterly grieving the loss of Aya’s mother during internment, Aya’s father signs a form that enables the government to deport them.
But war-devastated Tokyo is not much better. Aya’s father struggles to find work, compromising his morals and toiling long hours. Meanwhile, Aya, born and raised in Vancouver, is something of a pariah at her school, bullied for being foreign and paralyzed when asked to communicate in Japanese. Aya’s alienation is eventually mitigated by one of her principal tormenters, a willful girl named Fumi Tanaka, whose older sister has mysteriously disappeared. …

Told through rich, interlocking story lines, The Translation of Love mines this turbulent period to show how war irrevocably shapes the lives of people on both sides—and yet the novel also allows for a poignant spark of resilience, friendship, and love that translates across cultures and borders to stunning effect.

Awards and Honours

2017 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize–Literary Fiction (Finalist)

Anthology (Short story)

“Away” was first published in Grain Magazine. It was shortlisted for the 2009 awarding of The Journey Prize. It appeared in The Journey Prize: Stories: The Best of Canada’s New Writers (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2009).
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Anthology (Short story)

“Mating” was first published in the journal The Dalhousie Review. It was a finalist for the 2010 awarding of The Journey Prize. It appeared in The Journey Prize: Stories: The Best of Canada’s New Writers (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2010).
PS8329.J68