Forest View Auditorium
2121 S. Goebbert Rd

Join us for this signature event celebrating our 2022 One Book, One Village selection. Our 9th annual author Naomi Hirahara joins us in-person to share the story behind Clark and Division. She will be joined in conversation by Erik Matsunaga, author and historian of Chicago's Japanese American community.

Naomi Hirahara's author event will also be livestreamed on YouTube at 7 p.m. on October 27 on AHML's YouTube page

Naomi Hirahara is an Edgar Award-winning author of multiple traditional mystery series and noir short stories. Her Mas Arai mysteries, which have been published in Japanese, Korean and French, feature a Los Angeles gardener and Hiroshima survivor who solves crimes. The seventh and final Mas Arai mystery is Hiroshima Boy, which was nominated for an Edgar Award for best paperback original. Her first historical mystery is Clark and Division, which follows a Japanese American family’s move to Chicago in 1944 after being released from a California wartime detention center. Her second Leilani Santiago Hawai‘i mystery, An Eternal Lei, is scheduled to be released in 2022. A former journalist with The Rafu Shimpo newspaper, Naomi has also written numerous non-fiction history books and curated exhibitions. She has also written a middle-grade novel, 1001 Cranes.

Erik Matsunaga is an author and local historian whose investigations into the history of Chicago’s Japanese American community have been featured by the Japanese American National Museum, Alphawood Gallery, WBEZ Radio, and the Newberry Library. Born in Chicago, a descendant of WWII-era Nikkei resettlers from California, he curates @windycitynikkei which features “Bite-sized Glimpses of Japanese American Chicago”—on Instagram.

This program is presented as part of One Book, One Village.

To request disability accommodations, please contact us at 847-392-0100 or accessibility@ahml.info prior to the event.