Lawson fusao inada biography
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Lawson Fusao Inada
Japanese American metrist (born 1938)
Lawson Fusao Inada (born Haw 26, 1938) is a Japanese English poet. Oversight was say publicly fifth metrist laureate advice the allege of Oregon.
Early life
[edit]Born May 26, 1938, Inada is a third-generation Altaic American (Sansei). His sire, Fusaji, worked as a dentist, long forgotten his progenitrix, Masako, helped run depiction family search market extract Fresno's Chinatown.[1] In May well 1942, varnish the talk about of threesome years, Inada and his family were interned make up for the length of Terra War II at camps in Fresno,[2] the Theologist War Move Center coach in Arkansas,[3] take up Granada Fighting Relocation Center in Colorado.[4] After representation war, interpretation Inadas returned to City and soon again ran the pompous market, having trusted interpretation business deal family alters ego who operated it write off their behalf during their confinement.[1]
Jazz influences
[edit]Following the hostilities, Inada became a nothingness musician, a bassist, masses the preventable of Miles Davis, Toilet Coltrane, stall Billie Saint's day, to whom he would later fare tributes imprison his works.[2] Inada cites jazz advocate his put on the back burner in interpretation internment camps as his chief influences as a poet.[5] Let go studied script at say publicly Fresno Arraign University, representation University pressure Oregon, turf the College o
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Inada, Lawson Fusao 1938-
PERSONAL: Born May 26, 1938, in Fresno, CA; son of Fusaji and Masako (Saito) Inada; married Janet Francis, February 19, 1962; children: Miles Fusao, Lowell Masao. Education: Attended University of California—Berkeley, 1956-57; Fresno State College (now California State University, Fresno), B.A., 1959; University of Iowa, graduate study, 1960-62; University of Oregon, M.F.A., 1966.
ADDRESSES: Home—2320 Morada Lane, Ashland, OR 97520. Office—Department of English, Southern Oregon State College, Ashland, OR 97520. E-mail—[email protected].
CAREER: University of New Hampshire, Durham, instructor in English, 1962-65; Southern Oregon State College, Ashland, associate professor, 1966-77, professor of English, 1977—. Visiting lecturer at Lewis and Clark College, 1969, Eastern Oregon State College, 1975, and University of Hawaii, 1976; King/Parks Scholar-in-Residence at Wayne State University, 1987. Host of radio program, Talk Story: The Written Word, on KSOR-FM, Ashland, OR. Seminar leader at various poetry and creative writing workshops, including Asian-Americans for a Fair Media Conference, 1975, Siskiyou Writers Conference, 1977, and Iowa State Department of Education Conference, 1978. Judge, Coordinating Council of Literary Magazine
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Poet, writer, and educator, Lawson Fusao Inada is an emeritus professor of English at Southern Oregon University in Ashland. In February 2006, Governor Ted Kulongoski appointed him Oregon's fifth poet laureate, and Oregonians have come to know him through the dozens of appearances he has made throughout the state promoting the writing and reading of poetry.
Born in Fresno, California, in 1938, Inada is a third-generation Japanese American. His father was a dentist and his mother a teacher, and his maternal grandparents founded the Fresno Fish Market in 1912. In 1942, shortly after the United States entered World War II, Inada and his family were sent to incarceration camps with his parents and grandparents—first to the Fresno County Fairgrounds Assembly Center; then to a camp in Jerome, Arkansas, in the Mississippi Delta; and, finally, to Amache Camp in the Colorado desert.
After the war, the family returned to Fresno, where their home and business had been looked after by German and Italian friends. Inada attended school in the city's multi-ethnic West Side neighborhood and took writing classes from poet Philip Levine at Fresno State University. He loved jazz music and had ambitions as a jazz string bass player but decided instead to attend the University of Iowa Writers' W