Meet the Author
Angelo Sphere is a San Francisco Bay Area teacher, artist and author. He began learning Japanese at age seven and earned his degree in Japanese language from SFSU. He moved to Japan in the late 1990s and worked as an English language teacher. His interest in Buddhism led to his being ordained as a Soto-shu Buddhist priest in 1998, and he undertook his novitiate training at Dai Honzan Eiheiji, one of Japan's major Zen monasteries.
Years later, encouragement from the mystery writer Lynn York led Angelo to pursue creative writing studies at Mills College, where he worked with authors Cornelia Nixon, Micheline Marcom and Patricia Powell. He began work on Near the Earthly Paradise at Mills and earned his MFA in 2015.
Angelo has published poetry and short articles. A creative nonfiction story, "After-Action Report" was published in Rosebud magazine. Angelo lives in Sonoma County.
Creative Influences
I have always been fascinated by mythology, folklore and the mythological understanding of religion. My early influences came from the writings of Yukio Mishima and Ryunosuke Akutagawa, and in college I was introduced to the writings of Joseph Campbell and Nikos Kazantzakis. I've always been most enchanted by the spiritual hero in ficton. When I read Victoria Schmidt's writings on the female hero's journey, I realized I'd only ever read half the story.
In preparing Near the Earthly Paradise, I have looked for authors who explore the divine feminine in their fiction. Mia Couto's Confession of the Lioness, Ron Hansen's Mariette in Ecstasy, Luis Alberto Urrea's The Hummingbird's Daughter, Helene Wecker's The Golem and the Jinni and Virginia Woolf's Orlando have been extremely helpful in understanding how magic and the divine can emerge naturally into a realistic setting.
For the Buddhist and Japanese psychological aspects of my novel, I drew from my own experience and the invaluable insights of Hayao Kawai's Dreams, Myths and Fairy Tales in Japan and Sallie Tisdale's Women of the Way. Nilima Chitgopekar's work, Shakti was enormously helpful to my understanding of the feminine principle in Hinduism and the role of the Dakini.