Joy Kogawa is a Japanese Canadian writer, born in 1935 in Vancouver, B.C. She lived in Marpole, Vancouver in Kogawa House at 1450 West 64th Ave., until 1942 when with other Japanese Canadians, her family was removed from their home and sent to ghost towns in the B.C. mountains. After the war, forbidden to return to the west coast, Japanese Canadians were spread across Canada. Her family followed the sugar beet workers to a Southern Alberta village called Coaldale. She lives now in Toronto, Ontario.