Imagine my surprise: it was days after I had finished and fallen in love with “A
Tale for the Time Being,” and I had just realized its author, Ruth Ozeki, was in
the Pioneer Valley, teaching at Smith College. Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker,
Zen Buddhist priest and professor whose career and identities as a
Caucasian-Japanese-American and naturalized Canadian have inextricably shaped
her writing. After graduating from Smith College in 1980, she completed a
fellowship studying classical Japanese