Brian Bergstrom
Brian is a lecturer and translator currently based in Montréal after living in Chicago, Kyoto, and Yokohama. After graduate school at University of Chicago and Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, he has worked over ten years in the East Asian Studies Department at McGill University and has published academically in the peer-reviewed journals Mechademia, positions: asia critique, and Japan Forum on Japanese literature and contemporary society.
As a translator, Brian has worked in a variety of fields for over 20 years. He specializes in literary translation, many times working closely with living authors. His published translations include the collection We, the Children of Cats by Tomoyuki Hoshino (PM Press), which was longlisted for the 2013 Best Translated Book Award, and the short story “See” by Erika Kobayashi, which was the first runner-up in Asymptote’s Close Approximations Translated Fiction Contest in 2017.
Other translations of his have appeared in venues including Granta, Aperture, LitHub, Queer: LGBTQ Writing from Ancient Times to Yesterday (Head of Zeus, 2021), and The Art and Craft of Asian Stories (Bloomsbury, 2021).
Works
The Shining Sea, by Kōji Suzuki
The renowned author of the Ring novels unravels a story of lovers wrestling with the darkness within themselves—be it selfishness, lust, or despair—in a deeply introspective romantic mystery that will tug at your mind as well as your heart.
A seemingly amnesiac woman sits mutely before her psychiatrist. Unable, or perhaps unwilling, to speak, the only time she shows any hint of emotion is when she hums a song—and the song becomes the first clue.
Pregnant but abandoned by her lover, who boarded a tuna boat to brave turbulent waters far from home, she’d waded into the pitch-black waves one evening to drown herself...because when you feel like you’re stranded at sea all by yourself in the dead of the night, those waves call for you, lulling you to sink into the silence beneath.
What we go on to discover is a cursed fate, a ruthless reality, and the dark humor of a world ruled by the indifferent forces of chance. They say you never know what the future holds, but what if you’re told that you only have precisely a fifty-fifty chance of attaining happiness?
Trinity, Trinity, Trinity, by Erika Kobayashi
"Precious Stones" by Erika Kobayashi, in Elemental: Earth Stories
Animals Brag About Their Bottoms, by Maki Saito
"Pink" by Tomoyuki Hoshino, in The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories
"Red" by Nakamoto Takako & "The Path to Proletarian Realism" by Kurahara Korehito, in For Dignity, Justice, and Revolution: An Anthology of Japanese Proletarian Literature
We, the Children of Cats: Stories and Novellas by Tomoyuki Hoshino
Awards and Recognition
- Runner-up in Asymptote's 2017 Close Approximations Translated Fiction Contest for my translation of "See" by Erika Kobayashi
- Longlisted for 2013 Best Translated Book Award for "We, The Children of Cats: Stories and Novellas by Tomoyuki Hoshino" (PM Press, 2012)
Press and Media Mentions
- Shelf Awareness Q&A: Erika Kobayashi and Brian Bergstrom on Trinity, Trinity, Trinity
- Co-translation with Nishimura Keiko of "The Purehearted Major: On Innocence," by Kotani Mari (Mechademia: Second Arc, Fall 2021)
- Translation for LitHub: "A Tale of Three Diaries: On Destroyed Landscapes and Lost Narratives: Erika Kobayashi Travels from Auschwitz to Fukushima"
- Close Approximations: In Conversation With Fiction Runner-up, Brian Bergstrom
- Japan Times Review of We, the Children of Cats (2013)
- Translation of "Pink" by Tomoyuki Hoshino, including Translator's Note, for Granta
- Translation for Aperture: Long interview with photographer Kikuji Kawada (2019)
Location
Montréal, Québec, None
Author Contact
Category
Fiction & Literature