Thersa Matsuura

Author, Podcast Host

After a childhood living all over the U.S. — as far north as Fairbanks, Alaska and as far south as Jacksonville, Florida, Thersa Matsuura settled down in the far, far east.
She’s now an American expat who has lived over half her life in a fishing town in Japan. Her fluency in Japanese allows her to do research into parts of the culture – legends, folktales, and superstitions – that are little known to western audiences. A lot of what she digs up informs her short stories or becomes fodder for her podcast: Uncanny Japan.
Thersa is a graduate of Clarion West (2015), a recipient of HWA’s Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Scholarship, and the author of two collections, A Robe of Feathers and Other Stories (Counterpoint LLC, 2009) and The Carp-Faced Boy and Other Tales (Independent Regions Publishing, 2017). The latter was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award® (2017). She’s had stories published in various magazines, anthologies and serialised in the Asahi English Newspaper. Her most recent book is The Book of Japanese Folklore: An Encyclopedia of the Spirits, Monsters, and Yokai of Japanese Myth (Spring, 2024; Adams Media).