James Roth

James Roth, who writes fiction and nonfiction across several genres, grew up in southeastern Alabama during the sixties but somehow found himself graduating from a U.S. Army high school in Heidelberg, Germany, and later what was then called Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado. He then ran off to Japan to teach English at a private language school. He lived in Akita, then Sendai. During his time in Japan, he now and then wrote nonfiction articles about Japanese culture. Later, he went to China to teach at Shenzhen University and The Chinese University of Hong Kong/Shenzhen. In 2019, he accepted a posting to Africa University in Mutare, Zimbabwe, as a fellow in the U.S. State Department's EFL program. He considers Zimbabwe a second home, though his heart remains Japanese. His parents lived in American-occupied Japan in the months before he was born, so he likes to say he was “Made in Japan.” To his lasting regret, he was born in a military hospital back in the US. His first novel, "Death of a Gaijin," a mystery/love story, is set in Meiji era Yokohama. A novella, "Thicker Than Forget," is the story of an army lieutenant hoping to reunite with his Japanese lover in postwar Tokyo. His second full-length novel, "My Alabama Story," a coming-of-age/crime novel set in 1963-64 Alabama, tells of the forbidden teenage love between a young Jewish boy new to Alabama and a Black girl who teaches him about the South. He has also recently completed a second literary/detective novel, "A Prodigal Daughter," which takes place in modern-day Tokyo.