An International Peace Day Conversation on the 75th Anniversary of WWII

With award-winning novelists Aimee Liu, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, and Sherri L. Smith

Consequence Magazine is a literary magazine and forum dedicated to widening the conversation about the culture and consequences of war.

Aimee Liu is the bestselling author of the novels Flash House, Cloud Mountain, and Face and the memoirs Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders and Solitaire. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, published as a Literary Guild Super Release, and serialized in Good Housekeeping. She's received a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, a Bosque Fiction Prize, and special mention by the Pushcart Prize. Her essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Los Angeles Times, Poets & Writers, and many other periodicals and anthologies. A past president of the national literary organization PEN Center USA, she holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Bennington College and is on the faculty of Goddard College's MFA in Creative Writing Program at Port Townsend, WA. She lives in Los Angeles. More at aimeeliu.net

Rahna Reiko Rizzuto is the author of the memoir Hiroshima in the Morning, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle. Her debut novel, Why She Left Us, won an American Book Award. The first woman to graduate from Columbia College with a BA in Astrophysics, she was raised in Hawaii and lives in Brooklyn.

Sherri L. Smith is the author of seven award-winning young adult novels, including the 2009 California Book Awards Gold Medalist, Flygirl, and the historical fantasy, The Toymaker’s Apprentice.  Her books appear on multiple state lists and have been named Amelia Bloomer and American Library Association Best Books for Young People selections.  She teaches in the MFA Writing program at Goddard College in Vermont.  Her newest novel is The Blossom and the Firefly. Learn more at www.sherrilsmith.com

Glorious Boy by Aimee Liu (Red Hen Press)

"A riveting amalgam of history, family epic, anticolonial/antiwar treatise, cultural crossroads, and more, this latest from best-selling author Liu (Face) is a fascinating, irresistible marvel."--Terry Hong, STARRED Library Journal review

"Liu's prose is masterful. A good choice for book groups and for readers who are unafraid to be swept away."--*Starred Booklist Review*

"With a mesmerizing setting and transporting detail, Glorious Boy balances tropical beauty with raw, physical risk, and dives deep into grim truths about parental love and the power and limitation of language. This is a page-turner, sometimes violent but always revelatory. Readers won't easily forget the trials this young couple faces, or the landscape that changes them all."--Five Star Review from The Seattle Review of Books

What will it take to save Ty? This is the question that haunts Claire and Shep Durant in the wake of their four-year-old's disappearance. Until this moment, Port Blair's British surgeon and his young wife, a promising anthropologist, have led a charmed life in the colonial backwaters of India's Andaman Islands--thanks in part to Naila, a local girl who shares their mysteriously mute son's silent language. But with the war closing in and mandatory evacuation underway, the Durants don't realize until too late that Naila and Ty have vanished. While Claire sails for Calcutta, Shep stays to search for the children. Days later, the Japanese invade the Andamans, cutting off all communication. Fueled by guilt and anguish, Claire uses her unique knowledge of the islands' tribes to make herself indispensable to an all-male reconnaissance team headed back behind enemy lines. Her secret plan: rescue Shep and Ty. Through the brutal odyssey that follows, she'll discover truths about sacrifice that both shatter and transcend her understanding of devotion.

Shadow Child by Rahna Reiko Rizzuto (Grand Central Publishing)

For fans of Tayari Jones and Ruth Ozeki, from National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Rizzuto comes a haunting and suspenseful literary tale set in 1970s New York City and World War II-era Japan, about three strong women, the dangerous ties of family and identity, and the long shadow our histories can cast.

Twin sisters Hana and Kei grew up in a tiny Hawaiian town in the 1950s and 1960s, so close they shared the same nickname. Raised in dreamlike isolation by their loving but unstable mother, they were fatherless, mixed-race, and utterly inseparable, devoted to one another. But when their cherished threesome with Mama is broken, and then further shattered by a violent, nearly fatal betrayal that neither young woman can forgive, it seems their bond may be severed forever--until, six years later, Kei arrives on Hana's lonely Manhattan doorstep with a secret that will change everything.

Told in interwoven narratives that glide seamlessly between the gritty streets of New York, the lush and dangerous landscape of Hawaii, and the horrors of the Japanese internment camps and the bombing of Hiroshima, Shadow Child is set against an epic sweep of history. Volcanos, tsunamis, abandonment, racism, and war form the urgent, unforgettable backdrop of this intimate, evocative, and deeply moving story of motherhood, sisterhood, and second chances.

The Blossom and the Firefly by Sherri L. Smith (G.P. Putnam's Sons)

From the award-winning author of Flygirl comes this powerful WWII romance between two Japanese teens caught in the cogs of an unwinnable war, perfect for fans of Salt to the Sea, Lovely War, and Code Name Verity.

Japan 1945. Taro is a talented violinist and a kamikaze pilot in the days before his first and only mission. He believes he is ready to die for his country . . . until he meets Hana. Hana hasn't been the same since the day she was buried alive in a collapsed trench during a bomb raid. She wonders if it would have been better to have died that day . . . until she meets Taro.

A song will bring them together. The war will tear them apart. Is it possible to live an entire lifetime in eight short days?

★ “…Smith immerses her readers in a war narrative not often told to American readers, as well as a conflict-filled love story…The imagery of the title evokes the Japanese code of bushido and the fleeting beauty of existence.”

★“Impeccably researched, Smith’s detailed writing evokes traditional Eastern folklore—much like the Japanese stories she weaves through the novel…The ending feels inevitable, like the last notes of a perfect melody. “–School Library Journal, Starred Review

Skylit: Writing for Peace with Aimee Liu, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, and Sherri L. Smith