About Eric Madeen

Eric Madeen writes fiction and essays shaped by a life crossing borders. An award-winning literary novelist with six published books — four of them Amazon bestsellers — he has built a body of work that moves from rainforests of equatorial Africa to neon corridors of Tokyo, vibrating from friction to tenderness when cultures cross, mate and make meaning.

His path to the page ran straight through the heart. After earning his bachelor's degree at the University of Arizona, Madeen joined the Peace Corps and served in Francophone Gabon, building a primary school complex in a remote equatorial village. That deep immersion, once termed Going Native, in Central Africa became the raw material for his debut novel, Tanga, shelved in the Permanent Collection of Books by Peace Corps Writers in the Library of Congress, and now after yet another reworking recognizable as Water Drumming in the Soul. Just shy of Fore!, he earned a 3.9 GPA upon completion of an MFA in creative writing and literature at San Diego State University, where his knowledge burgeoned under the wizardry of renowned professors.

Madeen has made much of his career in Japan. He copywrote for Dentsu, then the world's largest advertising agency, and travelled ambitiously for All Nippon Airways' in-flight magazine, reaching hundreds of thousands of readers each month. His essays and reporting have appeared in Time Magazine, Asia Week, the Daily Yomiuri, Kyoto Journal, and Metropolis, among a wonderland of pubs.

Alongside his writing, Madeen liberated much energy in otherwise oppressive, and/or downright sleepy classrooms, summed up presciently by the late great George Orwell: “And they were all looking down at their screens.” For a few decades plus change, Madeen taught as a senior associate professor of literature at Tokyo City University and adjunct professor at Keio University, drawing from his bag of tricks to ensorcel students with, “Let's try something new!” — with his best teaching done when on an apparent tangent having him moving laterally and literarily, old crumpled lecture notes long having been shitcanned. Whether writing romance set under limpid African sky, novellas of overwork and ambition set in postmodern megalopolis Tokyo, or travel tales spanning Borneo to Japan, he brings a reporter's eye and a novelist's ear to voice. A writer's voice is the sum totality of their experiences and means of expression. Plug into Madeen's and feel the jolt, from wildman to professor, his worldwide classroom akin to pages of a book flipping in wind.