He is the author of Writing the Love of Boys (University of Minnesota Press, 2010), translator of Twelve Views from the Distance, the memoirs of the poet Takahashi Mutsuo (University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming), Forest of Eyes: Poetry of Tada Chimako (University of California Press, 2010), and co-editor of Japan: A Traveler’s Literary Companion (Whereabouts Press, 2006). He has won grants from the PEN Club of America and the National Endowment for the Arts for his translations. His translation of Tada Chimako won both the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature and the Landon Translation Award from the American Academy of Poets. He lives in a house with an overgrown garden in Kalamazoo.