Joseph Simurdiak
Joseph Simurdiak is a writer, a traveler, and the rogue offspring of both a schoolteacher and a runaway Jesuit. Born in 1991, he was possessed at a tender age by whatever restless spirit fills certain people with the need to create new worlds and write stories. He composed his first short stories on his grandmother’s lap as a child, delved deeper into the study of literature throughout his school years, and has now completed A Red Autumn Wind, his first major fantasy novel.
Joseph grew up in northern Wisconsin, where the vivid seasons and gorgeous country landscapes were powerful at stirring the imagination. Like all normal, well-adjusted young boys, he misspent his youth daydreaming about valiant princes and knights in castles while fighting his friends with wooden swords. Likewise influential was a family trip to China in 2003 to adopt an adorable little sister, which left him with an abiding interest in East Asia—which, after a winding course, led him to fall deeply in love with the history and classical culture of Japan.
Between 2010 and 2014, Joseph studied Political Science, Literature, and Japanese at both St. Norbert College in Green Bay and Sophia University in Tokyo. Equally at home amid the quiet countryside as he is among the lights and noise of the big city, he has practiced iaido (the old Japanese art of drawing a sword and cutting down one’s opponent in the most elegant way possible), fraternized with Zen monks, climbed Mt. Fuji, performed as a goddess on the kagura stage, and helped produce independent films in Tokyo.
Because creativity demands a wide breadth of experience, he is always seeking to learn more about the world across a range of fields—history, philosophy, religion, art, language, political theory, and psychology, among others. In his spare time he enjoys reading, traveling, meeting new people, and getting lost in strange places. He currently lives and writes near Tokyo.
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