Kamachi & Pictures of Her (KANATA 2)

Book 2 of Strangers Press' KANATA chapbook series.

“Though we’ve never actually gone and stood in front of her little stage, we like to sit here at the window like this, peeking over and listening in.

Two stories that consider the slipperiness of memory, partnerships, loss, and the stories men and women tell each other. The first features a female storyteller who continues to narrate tales as a form of blessing for her and her husband, who she has since lost. The second is the story of an older man remembering his lost wife – focusing on the old photographs he has of her, which he keeps looking through.

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KANATA, from かなた, translates as ‘far out’ or ‘beyond’, but also hints at a kind of nebulous liminality; we feel it holds in entertaining constellation something of the concerns of each of the stories selected as well as expressing something compelling about the act of reading and the art of translating literature from other languages and cultures.