WRITER INFO
Dear Readers,
I've started this web page out of necessity. The number of requests from students writing papers on my work has made a web page the natural answer. I hope you find this helpful.
Some of my favorite writers of fiction include:
Michael Cunningham (THE HOURS. Lovely and powerful and witty, as great fiction often is.)
Haruki Murakami (He is a trippy, provocative Japanese writer with a vivid imagination. Enjoyed SPUTNIK SWEETHEART.)
Mark Haddon (CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHTTIME was a moving and delightful journey for me.)
Chuck Palahniuk (He is most known for FIGHT CLUB but my favorite is SURVIVOR. I love his poetic rants on modern life which betray a beating heart just below a jaded surface.)
Alice Sebold (THE LOVELY BONES resonated for me with its intimate voice and poetic speculation on death and the logistics of heaven.)
Some of my favorite writers of poetry include:
Naomi Shihab Nye, Carolyn Forche, Sharon Olds, and Philip Levine.
WRITER BIO
Dwight Holden Okita, was born in 1958 in Chicago. I continue to live here. I remember I started writing poems in first grade because I had difficulty writing stories. My writing didn't move in such straight lines then. Teachers always encouraged me throughout my education to try to publish my things. And my first publication came in 1st grade in the Luella Log. I got a creative writing degree at University of Illinois at Chicago and eventually my first book of poems was published: CROSSING WITH THE LIGHT (TIA CHUCHA PRESS, 1992).
I am Japanese American, gay, and Buddhist (Soka Gakkai International) and these things are reflected in my work. I come from a small family that has grown smaller with time. My father Fred Yoshio Okita was a school teacher and armchair philosopher. During WWII, he served in the highly decorated 442nd Battalion, which was made up of Japanese Americans citizens. He passed away many years ago. My mother Patsy Takeyo Okita lives not far from me. She was interned in a relocation camp for 4 years when she was a teenager. She has -- and continues to be -- an inspiration for different characters and poems in my writing. She worked as a bookkeeper in a bank, salesperson extraordinaire, and homemaker. I have one brother. I have a diverse circle of friends and colleagues.
WRITER RESUME
DWIGHT OKITA, Writer
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Accomplishments
HBO NEW WRITERS PROJECT. My stage plays were selected from a pool of 2,700 entries. I was 1 of 25 writers whose work was showcased by the HBO New Writers Project through a series of staged readings for film and TV industry professionals in Los Angeles. (1994)
SUNDANCE SCREENWRITERS LAB. My screenplay MY LAST WEEK ON EARTH made it past the first cut of the Sundance selection process. (1998) And the screenplay was a quarterfinalist in the 2001 FADE IN AWARDS.
JOSEPH JEFFERSON CITATION. I received a Jefferson Citation for outstanding new work in Chicago theater for my collaboration on the play THE RADIANCE OF A THOUSAND SUNS. (1996)
ILLINOIS ARTS COUNCIL FELLOWSHIP. I was awarded a fellowship for achievement in poetry. (1988)
Fiction
THE PROSPECT OF MY ARRIVAL is the title of my first novel. It centers on a young fellow named Prospect who has yet to be born. A scientist will arrange for him to meet seven diverse people representing the best and worst the human race has to offer. It will give Prospect a taste of the world before deciding if he wants to stay.
THE SLEEPWALKER'S CONFESSION is a short story about the unlikely attraction between a man who sleepwalks and a man who keeps vanishing.
THE LULU CHRONICLES is a short story about an emerging friendship between a gay man and gay woman. The woman's eccentricities test the man's sense of himself as being all-embracing and tolerant.
Scripts
My produced stage plays include:
THE RAINY SEASON (Zebra Crossing Theater), a multicultural love story between an Asian man and a Latino man, both of whom have strong memories of rain but conflicting interpretations of its meaning.
THE SALAD BOWL DANCE (commissioned by the Chicago Historical Society), which looks at the aftermath of the Japanese American relocation camps as internees resettled in great numbers in Chicago after the war.
RICHARD SPECK (American Blues Theater), a black-comic look at the Richard Speck murders and the dangers of sleeping on a futon.
Poetry
My poetry book CROSSING WITH THE LIGHT was published by Tia Chucha Press. My poems have been widely reprinted in anthologies and textbooks ranging from Braided Lives: An Anthology of Multicultural American Writing to the Norton Introduction to Literature. I wrote and storyboarded the poetry video, also titled "Crossing with the Light." The video aired on public television's show "Image Union."
