Jami Nakamura Lin

Profile Photo

Jami Nakamura Lin is the author of THE NIGHT PARADE (Mariner Books/HarperCollins and Scribe UK 2023), an illustrated memoir that uses yokai & other Japanese , Taiwanese, & Okinawan  folklore to investigate what haunts us.  A former Catapult columnist, she's written for the New York Times, Electric Literature, and other publications. 

Jami has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts/Japan-US Friendship Commission, Yaddo, Sewanee, and We Need Diverse Books.

Twitter: @jaminlin / jaminakamuralin.com 

Stories

Cover Photo: Photograph by Shahzin Shajid/Unsplash
Legolas Bends the Space-Time Continuum

As the music crescendos, you fall, and then you fall some more. A portal, unused for twenty years, cracks open, and then—here you are again.

Sep 15, 2022
Cover Photo: This image is a production still from the movie LOVE ACTUALLY; it's the scene where Colin Firth's character loses all his papers to the wind as he is sitting at a desk in front of a lake. In this still, he sits at the desk as his papers fly away, a shocked expression on his face.
Writing Down the Ghosts

My whole process of writing is tricking my brain into writing without realizing what I’m doing, to make myself write even when the idea of writing instills a vomity feeling in my gut.

Sep 20, 2021
Cover Photo: This photograph shows the author's bedroom writing set up: a large pillow, with her laptop and notebooks sitting in front of it on the bed. To the right, we see a bookshelf and an adjustable lamp.
Where Jami Nakamura Lin Writes

That’s what my own process of writing, and living, is like: trying to conserve, redirect, and restore my energy in the most fruitful way.

Jul 15, 2021
Cover Photo: Illustration by Cori Lin for Catapult
The Three Corpses

From the beginning, I knew that terror is a god. But now, I also believe that what might sound like a death rattle is merely the echo of ancestral song.

Jan 13, 2021
Cover Photo: Illustration by Cori Lin for Catapult
How I'm Learning to Manage Rage as a Bipolar Woman

Are these the only two stories? The one, where you defeat your monster, and the other, where you succumb to it?

Nov 19, 2020
Cover Photo: Illustration by Cori Lin for Catapult
What the Religious Right Gets Wrong About Monsters

Perhaps the certainty that you are not the monster—that no matter what you do, you will never become the monster—is what gives rise to monstrous behavior.

Jul 27, 2020
Cover Photo: Illustration by Cori Lin for Catapult
You Gave the Enemy a Face—and That Face Was Mine

In America, we like to be heroes—to find our enemies and defeat them. So, in a pandemic where the enemy is not visceral, we create one that is.

May 14, 2020
Cover Photo: Illustration by Cori Lin for Catapult
The Faint Spirits: On Ghosts, Grief, and Motherhood

I do not have flesh; I only have ghosts. In this story, the dead are only what I say they are. Does this make them less real?

Feb 20, 2020
Cover Photo: Illustration by Cori Lin for Catapult
My Father and the Dragon King

Myths were—are—created to explain the unknown, like natural disasters, like death, like the unknowable bodies of water.

Jan 06, 2020