Foreword

After two years of online activities, it was a great joy to finally conduct the creative writing classes on Keio SFC campus. The students quickly established our classroom as a space to share their imaginative ideas, and encourage their classmates to do likewise. Through regular in-class readings of their work, I watched the students’ confidence deepen and their creative abilities expand. I am proud to present a small fragment of the amazing writing done this past year here in this anthology.

Among other assignments, the Spring 2022 students were asked to produce writing that was a conceptual or emotional extension of works by the following visual artists: Glenn Brown, Helen Frankenthaler, Jia Aili, René Magritte, Nam June Paik, and Jeff Wall. Video clips of Samuel Beckett’s Not I and MyAbridged’s 10 Hours of Rolling Soda Cans Down My Driveway were also used in this fashion.

In addition to further demands, the Fall 2022 students were required to literarily amplify the visual art of Rachel Baran, Juno Calypso, and Moki Mioke. Samuel Beckett’s Not I was once again subjected to a similar treatment it had faced in the spring, and students wrote tales of bodily transformation à la Franz Kafka’s famous novella.

 We will hold a small, on-campus event to celebrate the release of this anthology. Students will read their own works from the book. Tortoise’s Millions Now Living Will Never Die will be played softly on a suitcase record player in the background as they read. 

David F. Hoenigman

Visiting Lecturer

Faculty of Environment and Information Studies 

cover art: Ran Zhang