Event: The Literary and the Nuclear: Thinking Wartime through Manga, Fiction, Art, and Translation
March 11, 2026, from 5:30pm
Lucile Berkeley Buchanan Building, Room 220.
Kobayashi will talk about her work across media, drawing on historical research to tell very human stories about the huge, faceless forces of war and radiation.
Erika Kobayashi is one of the most exciting writers and artists working in Japan today, creating works that weave together meticulously researched historical fact and fiction, guided by what is invisible to the eye: time and history, family and memory, voices and traces. Her practice spans literature, comics, and visual art, and is rooted in long-term archival research. Her works in English translation include Trinity, Trinity, Trinity and Sunrise: Radiant Stories (Astra House, translated by Brian Bergstrom) and the graphic work Seeing the Light: A Graphic Odyssey―with Cat―Through the History of Radiation (translated by Winifred Bird, designed by Brennan Kelly, and published by arbaro books).
BrianBergstromis an award-winning translator and lecturer. His writing and translations have appeared in publications includingGranta, Paris Review,Aperture, Lit Hub,andThe Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories.His translation ofKobayashi’s Trinity, Trinity, Trinity won the 2022 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature, and he is also the translator of her short story collectionSunrise: Radiant Stories. His latest translations includeThe Dilemmas of Working Womenby Fumio Yamamoto (HarperVia 2025) andCapital from Zeroby Kōhei Satiō (Astra House, 2026).He is currently based in Montréal, Canada.
Co-Sponsored by the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the Albert Smith Nuclear Age Fund from the College of Arts and Sciences.
For any questions, please email Professor Daryl Maude:daryl.maude@colorado.edu.