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The Handbook of Modern and Contemporary Japanese Women Writers\xa0(MHM Limited and Amsterdam University Press, 2022) offers a comprehensive overview of women writers in Japan, from the late 19th century to the early 21st. Featuring 24 newly written contributions from scholars in the field\u2014representing expertise from North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia\u2014the Handbook introduces and analyzes works by modern and contemporary women writers that coalesce loosely around common themes, tropes, and genres. Putting writers from different generations in conversation with one another reveals the diverse ways they have responded to similar subjects. Whereas women writers may have shared concerns\u2014the pressure to conform to gendered expectation, the tension between family responsibility and individual interests, the quest for self-affirmation\u2014each writer invents her own approach. As readers will see, we have writers who turn to memoir and autobiography, while others prefer to imagine fabulous fictional worlds. Some engage with the literary classics\u2014whether Japanese, Chinese, or European\u2014and invest their works with rich intertextual allusions. Other writers grapple with colonialism, militarism, nationalism, and industrialization. This Handbook builds a foundation which invites readers to launch their own investigations into women\u2019s writing in Japan.\nProfessor Rebecca Copeland is a professor of Japanese literature at Washington University in St. Louis. Professor Copeland\u2019s research and teaching interests include modern and contemporary women\u2019s writing in Japan, modern literature and material culture, and translation studies. She is the author of\xa0The Sound of the Wind: The Life and Works of Uno Chiyo\xa0(1992) and\xa0Lost Leaves: Women Writers of Meiji Japan\xa0(2000), the latter of which was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2001. She is the editor of Woman Critiqued: Translated Essays on Japanese Women's Writing (2006) and co-editor of The Father-Daughter Plot: Japanese Literary Women and the Law of the Father (2001) and Modern Murasaki: Writing by Women of Meiji Japan (2006), and Diva Nation: Female Icons from Japanese Cultural History (2018). Professor Copeland also translates one of the most well-known Japanese woman writer, Kirino Natsuo\u2019s\xa0Grotesque\xa0(2007) and\xa0Joshinki\xa0(The Goddess Chronicles, 2012).\xa0The Goddess Chronicles\xa0won the 2014-15 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. Professor Copeland is also a creative writer and her debut novel,\xa0The Kimono Tattoo, was published in 2021.\nLinshan Jiang is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University. She received her Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she also obtained a Ph.D. emphasis in Translation Studies. Her research interests include modern and contemporary literature, film, and popular culture in mainland China, Taiwan, and Japan; trauma and memory studies; gender and sexuality studies; queer studies; as well as comparative literature and translation studies. Her primary research project focuses on female writers\u2019 war experiences and memories of the Asia-Pacific War, entitled\xa0Women Writing War Memories. Her second research project explores how queerness is performed in Sinophone queer cultural productions. She has published articles about gender studies and queer studies in literature and culture as well as translations of scholarly and popular works in Chinese and English. She has been making a podcast named\xa0Gleaners\xa0with her friends for more than ten years and she is also a host of the East Asian Studies channel for the New Books Network.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies