Creative Nonfiction. Cultural Writing. Carroll describes his first novel as an "exploration of Buddhist themes against the backdrop of the Musashi legend." The book introduces the reader to various elements of a society which was as violent and as vital as Italy during the Renaissance. Miyamoto Musashi has been well known from the kabuki stage and Japan's equivalent of pulp fiction; in a meticulously researched work, Carroll has used alternative sources and woven them into a fictional recreation of Musashi's career from his childhood to his death. Carroll has also provided a realistic view of Japan during its turbulent transition from centuries of civil war and anarchy to the stable and peaceful, albeit dictatorial, rule of the Tokugawa shoguns.

John Olson is an American poet and novelist. Born August 23, 1947 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Olson has lived for many years in Seattle, Washington. He has published eight collections of poetry and one novel, Souls of Wind, nominated for The Believer Magazine book of the year award. In 2004, Seattle's weekly newspaper, The Stranger, for whom he has written occasional essays, gave Olson one of its annual "genius awards."His writing notebooks have been exhibited at the University of Washington. Olson's prose poetry has been reviewed in print and online poetry magazines he poet Philip Lamantia said that Olson was "extraordinary...the greatest prose poetry [i've] ever read." and Clayton Eshleman said "he is writing the most outlandish, strange, and inventive prose poetry ever in the history of the prose poem."