Hideo Furukawa and Tomoka Shibasaki in conversation with Matthew Sharpe. Moderated by Roland Kelts and Motoyuki Shibata.

Saturday, May 16, 2026

2pm

525 W 26th St, New York, NY 10001

top left Roland Kelts top middle Hideo Furukawa top right Tomoka Shibasaki

bottom right Motoyuki Shibata bottom middle Matthew Sharpe bottom right MONKEY, Vol.6 HORROR

Hideo Furukawa and Tomoka Shibasaki in conversation with Matthew Sharpe.

Moderated by Roland Kelts and Motoyuki Shibata.

Saturday, May 16, 2PM

At SEIZAN Gallery, 525 W 26th St, New York, NY 10001

SEIZAN Gallery is excited to host a special event: Hideo Furukawa and Tomoka Shibasaki in conversation with Matthew Sharpe in collaboration with the annual anthology MONKEY . MONKEY’s contributing editor Roland Kelts and MONKEY’s founder Motoyuki Shibata will moderate a wide-ranging conversation among the three acclaimed authors, from a discussion of their latest works to their writing practices. Kendall Heitzman, a principal Furukawa translator, as well as Ted Goossen, MONKEY co founder, will also join the conversation.

MONKEY, the Japanese literary journal, and MONKEY New Writing from Japan feature visual work by artists, illustrators, and photographers, including SEIZAN artists Asako Tabata and Motohide Takami. To celebrate this special event, recent paintings by Asa Hiramatsu, a regular MONKEY contributor, will be on view in the gallery, till July 2, 2026. Volumes 3–6 of MONKEY New Writing from Japan will be available for purchase at the gallery. 

Hideo Furukawa is one of the most innovative writers in Japan today. His novel Belka, Why Don’t You Bark? was translated by Michael Emmerich; his partly fictional reportage Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure: A Tale That Begins with Fukushima was translated by Doug Slaymaker with Akiko Takenaka; and his short novel Slow Boat was translated by David Boyd. He has received the Noma New Face Prize, Mystery Writers of Japan Award, the Japan SF Grand Prize, and the Yukio Mishima Award. After translating the medieval classic The Tale of the Heike into modern Japanese, he published The Tale of the Heike: The Inu-Oh Chapters in 2017. Inu-Oh, the animated musical film based on the novel, directed by Masaaki Yuasa, was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 2023 Golden Globes. The English translation of the novel by Kendall Heitzman will be published under the Monkey imprint in 2027.

Matthew Sharpe is the acclaimed author of four novels: The Sleeping Father, Nothing Is Terrible, Jamestown, and You Were Wrong, as well as the collection Stories from the Tube. His latest book, Love in Wartime, translated into Japanese by Motoyuki Shibata, was published in Japan in 2021. He has taught creative writing and literature at Columbia University, Wesleyan University, Bard College, and elsewhere. He lives in Kingston, New York.

Tomoka Shibasaki is a novelist, short story writer, and essayist. She published her debut in 2000 when she was 27; it was adapted by Isao Yukisada and released as a film in 2004 (A Day on the Planet). Her 2007 novel Sono machi no ima wa (That Town Today) was awarded the Geijutsu Sensho Newcomers Prize, the Sakunosuke Oda Award, and the Sakuya Konohana Award. In 2010, her novel Awake or Asleep received the Noma New Face Prize; it was adapted into the film Asako I & II by Ryusuke Hamaguchi and screened at Cannes. Shibasaki won the Akutagawa Prize in 2014 for Spring Garden, translated into English by Polly Barton. Her groundbreaking short story collection A Hundred Years and a Day, also translated by Polly Barton, was published under the Monkey imprint with Stone Bridge Press in 2025. In 2026 Shibasaki won the Yomiuri Literary Prize for her 2025 novel Kaerenai Tantei (The Detective Who Couldn’t Go Home).

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