New Fiction From John Givens

John Givens (Korea 1967-69) has a story in The Mississippi Review currently online at http://www.mississippireview.com. The Mississippi Review is published by the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. The story is about a rogue samurai solving problems in the 17^th century entitled, “The Buddha-nature of the House:

John is from Northern California and earned his BA in English literature at the California State University Fresno and his MFA in creative writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, University of Iowa, where he was a Teaching/Writing Fellow.

[John is one of many fine Peace Corps writers who attended the famous Iowa writing program. The RPCV writers include Phil Damon (Ethiopia 1963-65), who, I believe, was the first RPCV in the program,  Richard  Wiley (Korea 1967-69),  and most recently Matt Davis (Mongolia 2001-03).]

 Afterwards John studied language and art in Kyoto for four years, then worked as a writer & editor in Tokyo for eight years. For fifteen years he was the creative director and branding consultant for advertising agencies in New York and San Francisco. He has published three novels in the US: Sons of the Pioneers, A Friend in the Police, and Living Alone; short stories have appeared in various journals. His non-fiction publications include A Guide to Dublin Bay: Mirror to the City and Irish Walled Towns, both published by The Liffey Press in Dublin. Today John lives in Howth, County Dublin, and is finishing The Plantain Manner, a novel set in seventeenth-century Japan.