Massimo Soumaré (Turin 1968) is a writer, translator, editor, essayist, and independent researcher. He has contributed to magazines specializing in Eastern cultures such as A Oriente!, for which he also edited the bilingual issue on Japan (2002), and Quaderni Asiatici, as well as Italian and Japanese literary culture magazines such as LN-LibriNuovi, Semicircle, Lovecraftian Studies, Ashikabi, Komatsu Sakyo Magazine, and Ronza. He wrote entries on modern Japanese literature for the Grande dizionario enciclopedico Nova (2001) and on Japan for the GDE (Grande Dizionario Enciclopedico) supplement (2011). He has also translated selected works by modern and contemporary Japanese writers such as Ken Asamatsu, Osamu Dazai, Kaori Ekuni, Mitsuyo Kakuta, Hideyuki Kikuchi, Miyuki Miyabe, Kenji Miyazawa, Shion Miura, Kazuki Sakuraba, Soseki Natsume, Michizo Tachihara, Yasutaka Tsutsui, and Kyusaku Yumeno.
As an author, his short fiction has appeared in various anthologies, including ALIA, Tutto il nero del Piemonte, Igyo korekushon, Kizuna: Fiction for Japan, and Onryo, avatar di morte, and his work has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and English.
In 2016, his short story “Come lucciole nelle sere d’estate” was a finalist for the Premio Internazionale di Narrativa “Il Prione,” and his short story “Il sottile filo del mare” was a finalist for the Premio Letterario Internazionale Marguerite Yourcenar.
He works as a Japanese translator and interpreter for the Camera del commercio, industria, artigianato ed agricoltura di Torino and teaches Japanese at the CentrOriente and the Fondazione Università Popolare di Torino.
Follow him on twitter at https://twitter.com/yamatai68
Read his work in Altered Reality Magazine:
The Parting of the White and Black (Italian version)
