The cover of the Japanese edition of Monk & Robot, published as an omnibus of both novellas. The Japanese title is ロボットとわたしの不思議な旅 (Robotto to watashi no fushigina tabi, literally "My Wonderful Journey with a Robot"), translated by Hosomi Haruko. The cover shows the two main characters, the nonbinary tea monk Dex and the robot Mosscap, sitting with cups of steaming tea in the wilderness. A cricket is in the foreground (plot point!) and Dex's marvelous oxbike (a pedal-powered mobile camper/teahouse) is in the background.

This (link) is a presentation I made on Becky Chambers last month at the 38th Conference of the Society of Ecocritical Studies–Japan, at Kinki University, 2026 Aug 7. I'm just sharing the slideshow here for today, and a few notes about it. While the slideshow doesn't have the text of the presentation, it does have the Works Cited, which may be of some interest.

Ecocriticism is a theoretical approach to literature (and other media) through an ecological lens. I've been in the SES-J for over a decade, sometimes on the editorial board of their journal. (I requested to retire from it during the first years of the pandemic as I was really getting overwhelmed by...everything. But when they have English-language submissions, they usually ask me to read/edit.)

This presentation was a lot of fun. It was my first in-person conference presentation since 2020, and it was good seeing a lot of longtime colleagues, and meeting some new people. And I was very gratified that my presentation was enthusiastically received, with lots of good questions during the Q&A and later.

The point of the presentation was to bring Becky Chambers and cozy literature to the attention of academics in Japan, and show how cozy does not mean shallow, and at the same time focus on the need for intersectionality in pursuing climate justice. You can't have climate justice without justice for all, was my argument. I covered most of Chambers' work: the 4-book Wayfarers Series, and the 2-novella Monk & Robot Series. During my research, I was surprised to find that only the first book of the Wayfarers Series, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, has been translated into Japanese.

One of the key sources was Eli Clare's “Meditations on Natural Worlds, Disabled Bodies, and a Politics of Cure” in Material Ecocriticism (edited by Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann, Indiana UP, 2014). I really recommend checking out Clare's writings on the politics of cure (link) and how important it is to address ableism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, and xenophobia while we address climate change. It all goes together.