David Mura is a memoirist, essayist, novelist, poet, critic, playwright and performance artist.

Mura’s latest book is The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself: Racial Myths and Our American Narratives (U. of MN Press), a collection of essays contrasting historical and fiction narratives by white Americans and African Americans, appearing Jan. 2023. His last book centered on creative writing and race, A Stranger’s Journey: Race, Identity & Narrative Craft in Writing (2018, University of Georgia Press). With essayist Carolyn Holbrook, Mura is co-editor of an anthology of Minnesota BIPOC writers, We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World (2021, U. of MN Press).

A Sansei or third generation Japanese American, Mura has written two memoirs: Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei (Grove-Atlantic), which chronicles his year-long stay in Japan and which won a 1991 Josephine Miles Book Award from the Oakland PEN and was listed in the New York Times Notable Books of Year; and Where the Body Meets Memory: An Odyssey of Race, Sexuality and Identity (1996, Anchor/Random). His novel Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire (2008, Coffee House Press) was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award, the John Gardner Fiction Prize and Virginia Commonwealth University Cabell First Novelist Award.

Mura’s four books of poetry are: The Last Incantations, Angels for the Burning, The Colors of Desire the (Carl Sandburg Literary Award from the Friends of the Chicago Public Library) and After We Lost Our Way (1989 National Poetry Series Contest winner. His books of essays include A Male Grief: Notes on Pornography & Addiction and Song for Uncle Tom, Tonto & Mr. Moto: Poetry & Identity (U. of Michigan Press Poets on Poetry series, 2002).