Last Train from Hiroshima Author Charles Pellegrino Speaks to Hawaii Author
One of Watermark Publishing's authors, Frances H. Kakugawa, started a dialogue with Charles Pellegrino, author of The Last Train from Hiroshima, a book which earlier this year received a great deal of attention for not-so-good reasons. Think James Frey-Oprah Winfrey-A Million Little Pieces-attention.
Frances, a former Hawaii public school educator, felt a very personal connection with Pellegrino's Last Train, which chronicles the experiences of some of the survivors of the Hiroshima atomic bomb—her parents' families perished at Hiroshima. When she discovered that there was some controversy over whether the survivors' accounts were true or not (one of Pellegrino's sources turned out to have duped the author), she posted an open letter to the author on her blog expressing her dismay.
To her surprise, Pellegrino wrote back to her.
Frances summarizes her exchange with Pellegrino on her Facebook page, where readers can find links to each portion of their email conversation, as well as links to the original New York Times review of The Last Train from Hiroshima and background information on the controversy surrounding the book.
Frances is the author of two children's books, Wordsworth the Poet and Wordsworth Dances the Waltz, featuring Wordsworth, a young poetry-loving mouse; Mosaic Moon: Caregiving Through Poetry, a resource for caregivers coping with loved ones with long-term illness; and Teacher, You Look Like A Horse!, a memoir of her years as a schoolteacher. She conducts writing workshops for adults and children to learn to use creative writing as an outlet to help cope with the stresses of caregiving or adjusting to life with a loved-one suffering from long-term illness.
Charles Pelligrino is well-known as the author of Ghosts of the Titanic and worked with James Cameron as a consultant on Cameron's Titanic expeditions and on the movie Avatar.
Tags: Charles Pellegrino, Frances Kakugawa, Last Train from Hiroshima, publishing controversy
