Marissa Skeels

Marissa Skeels is a Melbourne-based editor and translator who has lived in Fukushima, Kyoto, and Tokyo. Her translations of AI-written short stories were used by the Warsaw Cultural Center as the basis for performances at the Poland’s 2018 Science Festival, and she has a poetry translation forthcoming in Ezra.

Articles by Marissa Skeels:

23 November 201827 February 2019 · translation

Like light on the sea floor

Ota Yoko and Marissa Skeels

Ota Yoko (1903-1963) was the only prominent novelist to survive the bombing of Hiroshima. After it, she wrote only essays and fictional stories, which documented the experiences of victims, carving out the field of atomic literature in which she is renowned. Her obsessive dedication to realistically relating what happened was driven by her conviction that she was the only one left to do so. Burdened by survivor responsibility, she wrote on tranquilisers to dull the visceral trauma triggered by remembering, and struggled to find the right words, saying new vocabulary was needed to render ‘the reality of Hiroshima’.