Speaker: Jeffrey Angles is an award-winning poet, translator, and professor of Japanese literature at Western Michigan University. He is the author of Writing the Love of Boys (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) and These Things Here and Now: Poetic Responses to the March 11, 2011 Disasters (Josai University Press, 2016), as well as numerous articles about expressions of ideology in modern Japanese literature. Among his recent translations of modern Japanese poets are the modern novel-in-verse The Thorn Puller by Itō Hiromi (Stone Bridge Press, 2022) and a large selection of poetry by Nakahara Chūya called Angel at the Earth’s Extreme (Penguin, 2026). One of his special interests is mystery and adventure writing, especially that related to monsters, ghosts, and the uncanny. He has also recently translated a number of monster-related novels, including a bestselling translation of the 1955 work, Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again (University of Minnesota Press, 2023) and the 1961 novel, The Luminous Fairies and Mothra (University of Minnesota Press, 2026).