Reintroducing Myself as the Writer Formerly Known as J.P. Williams
I’m redesigning, relaunching and refocusing under my real name
Certainly, J.P. Williams isn’t not my name. I began going by the initials “J.P.” in the real world a long time ago, and Williams is situated in my family tree in such a way that it could be my honest-to-goodness family name. My parents, however, would insist that my name is John Werry.
My first job as a writer was punching in obituaries for a small-town newspaper before I moved on to news and features about local events, businesses and attractions. Later, I was an English teacher in Japan and didn’t write much. I was happy just to get a letter to the editor in The Japan Times. I’m also proud to be credited as an assistant compiler of the bibliography for The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer (The Library of Living Philosophers, 1997).
None of this amounts to authorship of a work with an ISBN number, the criteria for Medium’s coveted blue icon. I do, however, have some fiction online that I would love for more people to read. The banner link below will take you to a post with links to all my online fiction:
Professionally, I’m a freelance translator and editor in Japanese-to-English translation, mostly of entertainment media. I’ve translated hundreds of graphic novels in the following series and many more: REAL, Master Keaton, Golden-Kamuy, One-Punch Man, One-Piece, Neon Genesis: Evangelion, The Legend of Zelda and Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba. It was also my pleasure to translate Dead Dead Demon’s DeDeDeDe Destruction, which was nominated for the Eisner Award for Best U.S. Edition of International Material — Asia in 2019, and samples of Wombs for presentation at Worldcon at Helsinki, Finland in 2017.
Throw in roughly a dozen light novels, and it’s hard to tell where being a translator ends and being a booklover begins. One of my first translation credits was as co-translator of Hot Gimmick S, a spin-off of the Hot Gimmick shojo manga series. More recently, the novels Jujutsu Kaisen: Summer of Ashes, Autumn of Dust and Jujutsu Kaisen: Thorny Road at Dawn found their way into bookstores. Along the way, I translated most of The Combat Baker and the Automaton Waitress, a fantasy/steampunk series available for download on Book Walker.
On Medium, I’ve tended to write about philosophy, books, music and sundry interests. I edited the now defunct music publication The Gleaming Sword during the pandemic years, and when I was in the Medium Partner Program, I was a Top Writer in Music and Books on multiple occasions. This year, I wrote about boxing as a means of learning more about the sport, assessing my progress in the ring, and keeping myself motivated. Most of my old posts are gone now as I make space for a fresh start.
Thanks for stopping by to see who I am. You can also find me on Goodreads. I hope you’ll find something you like among my posts, and I hope you’ll drop me a comment to introduce yourself or to recommend something you’ve worked on that you’d like me to check out.
