Mariko Tamaki was born in Toronto, Ontario in 1975. She is an LGBTQ activist, performance artist, and writer best known for her graphic novels Skim and This One Summer, which are, respectively, about Toronto Catholic school girls in the ‘90s and two preteen friends coming of age in a small beach town. She writes fiction and nonfiction prose and has written for BOOM! Studios, Marvel, and DC Comics.
Tamaki moved to the San Francisco Bay in 2012 after having grown up in Ontario. According to her blog, she soon called into question things such as her concept of reasonable rent, her expectations of avocados, and her understanding of January weather. She commented that San Francisco is a lovely place, and she currently lives in Oakland, California.
Tamaki attended Havergal College, an all-girls independent school in Toronto. She studied English literature at McGill University, earning her BA in 1998. Tamaki earned an MA in women’s studies from York University and worked for two years on a PhD in linguistic anthropology at the University of Toronto, leaving the PhD program in 2008.
Mariko is a writer, and her cousin Jillian Tamaki is an illustrator. Jillian and Mariko influenced each other creatively growing up and have a similar familial sense of humor. Mariko Tamaki was inspired by Douglas Coupland’s Generation X and says, “[It] was the book that first made me think it would be possible to write, because it was the first book that felt like it was a voice I recognized, which made me think that writing a book was something I could do in ‘my’ voice.”
Haunts:
- Tamaki has attended the Queers & Comics Conference at the California College of the Arts (1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco, CA 94107), the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, and the ALA Annual Conference & Exhibition in San Francisco, to name a few. She also has a strong presence locally and has given readings at the Children’s Center at the Main Library in San Francisco as well as numerous other venues throughout the Bay, such as the Berkeley Public Library and Book Passage.
~ by Hannah Parkins ~
External Links:
Tamaki, Mariko. “Author Interview: Mariko Tamaki.” SOKY Book Fest, 29 Feb. 2016, https://sokybookfest.org/blog/2016/02/29/author-interview-mariko-tamaki/.
http://marikotamaki.blogspot.com/2012/01/
https://twitter.com/marikotamaki?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
https://www.macmillanspeakers.com/marikotamaki
Image 1 from https://www.newsarama.com/47233-mariko-tamaki-to-curate-new-lgbtq-centric-line-for-abrams.html
Image 2 from http://nicolejgeorges.com/episode-26-mariko-tamaki-plus-advice-on/ (Photo by Kyle Lasky)
Image 3 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skim_(comics)
Image 4 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_One_Summer
Image 5 from https://books.google.com/books/about/Emiko_Superstar.html?id=VZ6YJAAACAAJ&source=kp_cover
Image 6 from https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=lolWDwAAQBAJ&gl=us&hl=en-US&source=productsearch&utm_source=HA_Desktop_US&utm_medium=SEM&utm_campaign=PLA&pcampaignid=MKTAD0930BO1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIg-35_Zyp5gIViaDsCh1hwA8ZEAQYAiABEgJ4i_D_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds
Image 7 from https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-authors/article/76171-q-a-with-jillian-tamaki.html
Image 8 from http://marikotamaki.blogspot.com/?fbclid=IwAR1Q6TJQ06_PqdfViM70WNatXgmq2uMKuHdO2wb-6x8lFdbEEsnLK9ygNQ0
Image 9 from http://marikotamaki.blogspot.com/?fbclid=IwAR1Q6TJQ06_PqdfViM70WNatXgmq2uMKuHdO2wb-6x8lFdbEEsnLK9ygNQ0
Image 10 from http://marikotamaki.blogspot.com/?fbclid=IwAR1Q6TJQ06_PqdfViM70WNatXgmq2uMKuHdO2wb-6x8lFdbEEsnLK9ygNQ0
