Many thanks to all the students and scholars who came to our book launch for JOHN OKADA at the Association for Asian American Studies conference at San Francisco’s St. Francis Hotel — whether to our panel on Saturday morning in the Grand Ballroom, or visiting the University of Washington Press table in the exhibit hall.
Greg Robinson opened our panel by reading the paper authored by contributor Jeff Yamashita reviewing two generations of critical literature on No-No Boy. Jeff was regrettably called away at the last minute
and unable to speak in person. I presented the life and rediscovered works of John Okada, with the help of 40-plus photographs, only a few of which appear in the book. Floyd Cheung spoke about Okada’s studies in creative writing with Professor Grant Redford at the University of Washington after coming back from the war, showing how Okada experimented with various storytelling devices in his five long-unseen short stories and how he later deployed those devices in No-No Boy. We then pulled the chairs into a 
circle for a roundtable discussion of how we discovered the new Okada material, and other literary influences that might have gone into No-No Boy.
At the UW Press table, editor-in-chief Larin McLaughlin and assistant editor Mike Baccam talked up the book to everyone who stopped by. Our production editor Margaret Sullivan worked furiously over the last several weeks to produce the bound galleys that Larin 
and Mike were pleased to bring to the conference. As Greg observed, no matter how many times he’s published, there’s nothing like the moment of finally holding a new book in one’s hand. We hope to have the finished books ready to ship in time for the Tule Lake and Minidoka Pilgrimages this summer. You can still preorder the book and get the conference special of 30 percent off and free domestic shipping, with the presale code of W812.
The #AAAS2018 conference marks the start of a long journey over the next year to share our new research with the community, with a stop already planned for #AAAS2019 in Madison, Wisconsin and possibly the nearby Chicago area. See you on the road.