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About this Blog

This blog is for fledgling publishers everywhere. It's the kind of site we longed for when we started our publishing venture in 2002.

Our goal is to:

• Shine our bright and wobbly flashlight on the Publishing Industry as we stumble through the process of making books (beautiful and entertaining books, we might add).
• Pontificate about publishing. We wouldn't be a blog if we didn't pontificate about something. But who better to speak with pompous authority than a little Northwest publisher with one book under its belt? We are the Ignatius J. Reilly of the Publishing Industry.
• Create a community that's interested in bringing new ideas and stories to American bookshelves.
• And, of course, entertain you.

About the Authors

Bruce Rutledge is a journalist, author and teacher who lived in Japan for 15 years before returning to the US in 2002. During his time in Japan, Rutledge worked as chief copy editor of The Nikkei Weekly, editor in chief of J@pan Inc magazine, a part-time lecturer at Tsukuba University and the University of Tokyo and as a free-lance writer for Asiaweek. He published Working in Japan with Ask Publishing in 2001, and co-wrote a children's book, Tiny Travellers in Tokyo, with his wife, Yuko Enomoto. Rutledge has a bachelor's degree from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and a master's in journalism from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

Rutledge founded Chin Music Press in Seattle in 2002 to offer a venue for new writers and artists to publish their work and to add a new voice to the American literary landscape. He believes Americans should know more about Asia, and he plans to trick them into learning about the region by publishing entertaining and beautiful books.

Craig Mod, art director, is a designer, photographer and writer living in Japan. He graduated with honors from the University of Pennsylvania in 2003 with a BSE in digital media design. His work has been exhibited extensively in the US and Japan. His personal site is viewable here: craigmod.com

Yuko Enomoto, former journalist, serves as editor, translator and secretary for Chin Music Press. She translated the "Floating Feeling" stories in Kuhaku and contributed to the glossary.

David Cady is probably the world's greatest canned coffee connoisseur. He contributed to Kuhaku the title piece, "Canned Coffee," "Lunch Break" and several glossary entries. David is out to make canned coffee reviews a respected literary form like haiku, tanka and cowboy poetry.

Roland Kelts is a writer from New York whose fiction, essays, articles and reviews appear in numerous publications in the US and Japan. He contributed the essay "Father Hunters" to Kuhaku. Roland was the winner of the Playboy College Fiction Contest and a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship Award in writing. In addition to Manhattan and Tokyo, he has lived in London, San Francisco, Anchorage and Osaka. His forthcoming novel is called ACCESS.

Akira Morita is a graphic designer, marketing consultant and writer currently living in Seattle. He likes sushi, music and coffee.

Noriko Suzuki is a graduate student at Tsukuba University in Japan. She received a master's in area studies from the same university in 2003.