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Award-Winning Author/Space Dandy Writer Toh EnJoe to Appear in NYC

According to the official website of North American publisher Viz Media's Haikasoru imprint, writer Toh Enjoe will be in New York City this May for series of reading events. EnJoe will first appear at the PEN World Voices Festival on May 3 at the Monkey Business–Japan/America: Writers' Dialogue. The event's co-sponsors — the Asia Society, The Japan Foundation, A Public Space, and Monkey Business — provides description on the talk:

Matthew Sharpe and Laird Hunt join Hideo Furukawa and Toh Enjoe, two of Japan's most exciting writers today, for another intriguing cross-cultural encounter. The conversation will be facilitated by Motoyuki Shibata and Ted Goossen, the editors/translators of Monkey Business, the acclaimed English-language anthology of newly translated Japanese writing, the fourth issue of which is scheduled to coincide with the Festival.

EnJoe and Furukawa will then discuss their works with Roland Kelts at Baruch College on May 5 and conduct a book reading at the Bookcourt bookstore with Kelts that same day.

Last Friday, the English-language version of EnJoe's book Self-Reference Engine earned a Special Citation honor at Philip K. Dick Awards ceremony.The Philip K. Dick Award and the related Special Citation honor the American science-fiction author of the same name. Viz's Haikasoru imprint published the book last year, and describes the book's contents:

This is not a novel.
This is not a short story collection.
This is Self-Reference ENGINE.

Instructions for Use: Read chapters in order.
Contemplate the dreams of twenty-two dead Freuds.
Note your position in space-time at all times (and spaces). Keep an eye out for a talking bobby sock named Bobby Socks. Beware the star-man Alpha Centauri. Remember that the chapter entitled "Japanese" is translated from the Japanese, but should be read in Japanese. Warning: if reading this book on the back of a catfish statue, the text may vanish at any moment, and you may forget that it ever existed.

From the mind of Toh Enjoe comes Self-Reference ENGINE, a textual machine that combines the rigor of Stanislaw Lem with the imagination of Jorge Luis Borges. Do not operate heavy machinery for one hour after reading.

41-year-old EnJoe is the second Japanese honoree of the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and Philip K. Dick Trust's Special Citation. The first was the late Project Itoh's novel Harmony, which Haikasoru also published in English. (Harmony and another science-fiction novel by Itoh, Genocidal Organ, are inspiring an anime film project from Fuji TV's Noitamina.)

In addition to his award-winning books and research in theoretical physics, EnJoe wrote the 11th episode of Space Dandy, "I'm Never Remembering You, Baby." In 2007, he won the Bungakukai Shinjinsho (Literary World Newcomer's Prize) with “Of the Baseball.” In 2010 his novel U Yu Shi Tan won the Noma Prize for new authors. In 2011, his “This Is a Pen” was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize, and he won Waseda University's Tsubouchi Shouyou Prize. In January 2012, he won the Akutagawa Prize with “Doukeshi no Cyo” (Harlequin's Butterflies).