Angela (she/her or they/them) is a mixed Japanese Canadian scholar, writer, and artist from Vancouver, British Columbia currently studying under the supervision of Dr. Amber Dean as a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.*

Angela grew up on British Columbia's west coast. In 2014, she completed her BA in English at the University of Victoria, before getting involved in the Japanese Canadian community, primarily in Vancouver. With familial and community roots in the city's Powell Street neighbourhood (Paueru Gai / パウエル街, the largest historic home of Japanese Canadians) and the Downtown Eastside (of which Paueru Gai is a part), much of Angela’s work explores the overlap between the Japanese Canadian and Downtown Eastside communities, particularly in terms of loss, memory, and resistance.

In 2019, Angela completed her MA in  Socio-Cultural Studies of Health under the supervision of Dr. Jeff Masuda at Queen's University. Driven by her research experience, Angela began working on a collection of linked short stories tentatively titled Hotel Blue, which she further developed through Simon Fraser University's creative writing program, The Writer's Studio Online. In 2020, with the mentorship of her cohort and writer and podcaster Jen Sookfong Lee, Angela graduated from TWSO.

Now a Ph.D. Candidate studying under the supervision of Dr. Amber Dean in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, Angela's doctoral project examines the relationship between the Japanese Canadian and Downtown Eastside communities from the early 1970s to the present-day. Broadly speaking, Angela's doctoral project asks: what happens when two communities claim one place as their historic (Japanese Canadian) or contemporary (Downtown Eastside) home?

Angela's academic work has been published in the Urban History Review, the Annual Review of Interdisciplinary Justice Research, and Canadian Literature. Her creative and community writing has been published in emerge20, The Bulletin/Geppo, Nikkei Images, The Volcano, Nikkei Voice, and elsewhere.

* Vancouver is built on the unceded lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm [Musqueam], səlilwətaɬ [Tsleil-Waututh], and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh [Squamish] First Nations. Hamilton is built on the lands of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas and governed by the Dish With One Spoon Wampum, an agreement between the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabek to share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes.