Join us Thursday, April 8 at 6:30 p.m. on Facebook Live @FairfieldUBookstore for lively virtual conversation between author and Fairfield MFA alumna Sarah Sleeper and Fairfield University MFA Professor Karen Osborn, as they discuss Sleeper’s new novel Gaijin. The Japanese word gaijin means “unwelcome foreigner,” a slur directed at non-Japanese people in Japan.

One of the novel’s main characters, Lucy, is a budding journalist at Northwestern University, obsessed with an exotic new student, Owen Ota, who becomes her lover and her sensei. When he disappears without explanation, Lucy is devastated and sets out to find him. This story of the “unwelcome foreigner” is not an easy one, and Sleeper gives it the precision, sensitivity, and depth it deserves. Mark the date: April 8, and tune in to the Fairfield University Bookstore's Facebook page at 6:30 p.m. to join the event.

Gaijin is Sleeper’s first novel. Her short story, “A Few Innocuous Lines,” won an award from Writer’s Digest. Her non-fiction essay, “On Getting Vivian,” was published in The Shanghai Literary Review. Sleeper’s poetry was published in A Year in Ink, San Diego Poetry Annual and Painters & Poets, and exhibited at the Bellarmine Museum. In the recent past she was an editor at New Rivers Press, and editor-in-chief of the literary journal Mason’s Road. Sleeper completed her MFA in Creative Writing at Fairfield University's College of Arts and Sciences in 2012. Prior to that she had a 25-year career as a business writer and technology reporter, during which she won three journalism awards and a fellowship at the National Press Foundation.

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