The Creativity Cafe The Creativity Cafe

Clara Kumagai is from Canada, Japan and Ireland. Her fiction and non-fiction for children and adults has been published in The Stinging Fly, The Irish Times, Banshee and The Kyoto Journal. Her debut YA novel, Catfish Rolling blends magical realism with Japanese myth in a story about grief, memory and time. Catfish Rolling was nominated for the YOTO Carnegie Award, a finalist for the Great Reads Award and shortlisted for the 2023 KPMG Children's Books Ireland Awards. She lives and writes in Ireland.



Here is the blurb from Clara’s book:

There's a catfish under the islands of Japan and when it rolls the land rises and falls.

Sora hates the catfish whose rolling caused an earthquake so powerful it cracked time itself. It destroyed her home and took her mother. Now Sora and her scientist father live close to the zones – the wild and abandoned places where time runs faster or slower than normal. Sora is sensitive to the shifts, and her father recruits her help in exploring these liminal spaces.

But it's dangerous there – and as she strays further inside in search of her mother, she finds that time distorts, memories fracture and shadows, a glimmer of things not entirely human, linger. After Sora's father goes missing, she has no choice but to venture into uncharted spaces within the time zones to find him, her mother and perhaps even the catfish itself...



https://www.instagram.com/clarakiyoko

https://x.com/clarakiyoko





Do you have a question for the Ask Us Anything segment?

Any topic is fine, we love to hear from all our listeners. Email us here and we will do our best to answer your question in one of the episodes.

thecreativitycafe21@gmail.com

https://www.instagram.com/thecreativitycafepodcast



Paige Baldwin Ando

https://www.wholeselfcreative.com

https://instagram.com/wholeselfcreative



Jordana Matsuda

https://instagram.com/jordanaillustration

https://www.jordana-matsuda.com


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Owner of Mornington Crescent Baking School and Bakery here in Tokyo, Japan, Stacey Ward originally hails from the Stockport, in the UK. Through the bakery, Stacey teaches people to make delicacies that might be different from what they're used to, but give them new baking skills and a fresh understanding of the baked goods in their cultural context. Twice a month, Mornington Crescent opens to the public, and they also have a baking book published in both English and Japanese. This year is the tenth anniversary of the bakery sharing delicious treats with its community by bringing the best of authentic British home baking to us here in Tokyo. http://mornington-crescent.co.jp

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Through her bold and innovative use of vibrant color, painter Dar James invites us into a world of striking shapes and textures. From her home in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania in the United States, Dar is a full-time working and teaching artist, the writer and illustrator of six picture books for children, and an educator for GOLDEN Acrylics and Silver Brush Company. Inspired by the natural world, Dar paints from the imagination and sees each piece of art like a puzzle to be solved, where each mark or shape makes way for another mark or shape, and every step along the way connects the beginning to the final dot or line. Dar also conducts online workshops, facilitates immersion weekends in New York, and participates in regional shows and exhibits. To her, being an artist means living a life of wonder, and sharing that with others. Find out more about Dar https://www.darsworld.com https://www.instagram.com/indarsworld

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Born on the eastern edge of the Eurasian continent, in Hokkaido, Japan, Mayumi Nakabayashi has now spent 24 years on its western end, in the Republic of Ireland. While Mayumi's primary medium of expression is Land Art, which is art that's made through and with natural materials in the environment, she also works with voice. This means that the materials she creates with are diverse and ever-changing. From the delicate nature of working with spider webs to the dynamism of working with the human body, the contrasts and internal contradictions of Mayumi's work give her cause to think deeply about the nature of each piece she interacts with.

Through Land Art, Mayumi creates geometric patterns using petals, twigs, leaves, stones, and other natural materials in her environment. While her materials inevitably come in diverse shapes and sizes, they do follow the rhythms of the sun and moon, have innate geometries in their beings, and behave collectively according to the principle of emergence. Rhythms, geometries, and patterns seem to bring harmony and connection in the natural world, and Mayumi's work is greatly inspired by these aspects of nature. Find out more about Mayumi here: https://www.instagram.com/mayuminakabayashi?igsh=N2Y3bWh6cXV5Zjdo

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The Nuanua is a colourful creative space created by Rosemary, an artist and designer living in Sydney Australia. Starting with woven wall hangings, her creative journey has moved into more fibre art including punch needle and the most recent addition of rug tufting.

The name of her creative space ‘Nuanua’ is derived from the Samoan word for rainbow, which is part of Rosemary’s heritage. As an inspired and curious creative, Rosemary hopes to keep The Nuanua as an open artistic adventure, constantly exploring old and new mediums, keeping her colourful space open to endless possibilities.



Find out more here:

https://www.instagram.com/thenuanua





Do you have a question for the Ask Us Anything segment?

Any topic is fine, we love to hear from all our listeners. Email us here and we will do our best to answer your question in one of the episodes.

thecreativitycafe21@gmail.com

https://www.instagram.com/thecreativitycafepodcast



Paige Baldwin Ando

https://www.wholeselfcreative.com

https://instagram.com/wholeselfcreative



Jordana Matsuda

https://instagram.com/jordanaillustration

https://www.jordana-matsuda.com




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Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thecreativitycafe/message

Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States, Lindsey Gradolph has lived in various parts of Japan since 2009. Using repurposed denim and other secondhand or vintage textiles, Lindsey creates abstract, intuitive embroidery works that each compose their own little universes. Incorporating bright colors and a variety of textures, Lindsey's pieces are a bit like being invited into a zen garden or a hako niwa, a small, contained garden that encompasses a tiny world of tactile discovery. Rich and compelling in their themes and explorations, each piece invites you to get lost in it, and enjoy the experience thoroughly. 



Find out more about Lindsey here:

https://www.lindzeanne.com

https://www.instagram.com/lindzeanne

https://lindzeanne.substack.com/about





Do you have a question for the Ask Us Anything segment?

Any topic is fine, we love to hear from all our listeners. Email us here and we will do our best to answer your question in one of the episodes.

thecreativitycafe21@gmail.com





Paige Baldwin Ando

https://www.wholeselfcreative.com

https://instagram.com/wholeselfcreative





Jordana Matsuda

https://instagram.com/jordanaillustration

https://www.jordana-matsuda.com


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Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thecreativitycafe/message