Dwight Okita
@worldbeat99Dwight Okita's novel THE PROSPECT OF MY ARRIVAL made it to the top 3 out of 5,000 books competing for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award in 2008. His stage plays were selected to be part of the HBO New Writers Showcase in which works were performed live for industry professionals. 25 writers were asked to participate out of 2,700 who submitted.
Dwight's publications include the acclaimed poetry book Crossing with the Light (Tia Chucha Press), and the stage play "The Rainy Season" in the anthology Asian American Drama (Applause). His poems have been widely published in many anthologies and textbooks. Among them: Unsettling America (Penguin), The Norton Introduction to Literature , and the Smithsonian's Celebrate America . He was profiled in Lives of Notable Asian Americans in Literature and Education (Chelsea House) and Yellow Light: The Flowering of Asian American Arts (Temple University). The author has also appeared on the Chicago affiliate of NPR reading his personal essays on the radio. Please feel free to visit dwightland.homestead.com and leave a message for Dwight!
Updated December 2009
Stories from This Author
Catching Lightning in a Jar
Jan. 6, 2010 • Dwight Okita
When you’re a writer, everything that happens to you is a potential story you will one day write. The more awkward, wacky, horrible or wonderful the moments comprising the experience—the better. The writer’s job is to catch lightning in a jar. To honor the experience by rendering it as vividly on the page as it was lived in life. Sometimes a writer can even write about an experience he’s never had. For example, in one of my novels, I write …
