David Mura is a poet, memoirist, novelist, and performance artist who creates his work from the perspective of a Sansei, a third-generation Japanese American. He earned a BA from Grinnell College and an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College. Mura co-founded the Asian American Renaissance, an Asian American arts organization and served as its artistic director. His collections of poetry include The Last Incantations (2014), Angels for the Burning (2004), The Colors of Desire (1996), and After We Lost our Way (1989), winner of the National Poetry Series. He is the author of the acclaimed memoirs Where the Body Meets Memory: An Odyssey of Race, Sexuality, and Identity (2006) and Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei (1991), which won the Josephine Miles Award. His novel Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire (2008) was a finalist for the Minnesota Book award, the John Gardner Fiction Prize, and the Virginia Commonwealth University Cabell First Novelist Award. He has also staged a number of performance pieces and written works of criticism, including A Stranger's Journey: Race, Identity, and Narrative Craft in Writing (2018).
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