Fil Lewitt (Brown 1963) literary papers (MS.2015.021)

Biographical note

Fil Lewitt (Philip Jay Lewitt) was born to Albert (Brown 1933) and Rita Lewitt in Boston in 1941 and grew up in Nashua, New Hampshire. He received his B.A. in English Literature from Brown University in 1963. He went on to get his MA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University in 1968 and his Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1985. In 1964, he bought an old farm in Mendocino City, California, renamed it Big River Farm and learned how to design, build, and keep animals, fruit, and vegetables. In 1970, he turned the farm into a Zen Buddhist commune called “Big River Farm Sangha.” In 1976, he moved to Japan and began a new career as a professor of English and American literature and writing at Tottori National University. He taught there for 12 years. In 1990, he became a Professor of English at Kyoto Seika University, where he also directed the writing program until he retired in 2009. He has also worked as a jazz musician, dishwasher, cook, small bookstore owner, logger, mill worker, farmer, designer, builder, and gardener. He has written 22 books as of 2017, which include poetry, satirical novels, mystery novels, essays, and a handbook on writing for Japanese university students. He and his wife, Tomomi Maeda, currently live in Bangkok, Thailand.

Bibliography: Most of the titles on this list are available at the Brown University Library.

A modern pilgrim : Hi hai high : Zen and the art of backpacking. Hicksville, N.Y. : Exposition Press, 1980.

Movable Text: A Beginning Writer's Notebook, 1993.

Sweet sweet cold : sonnets from Siam : Krabi / Railel Beach / 1991-1993. Kyoto : Scribblers Inc., 1993.

Tight : a novel of the 1960s. Charleston, S.C. : Fictional Enterprises / Amazon, 2008.

Dead white males : a Santa Fe novel. Charleston, S.C. : Fictional Enterprises / Amazon, 2008.

Millennial blues : a novel of New Mexico. Charleston, S.C. : Fictional Enterprises / Amazon, 2008.

The zen follies : (more or less, less is more). Charleston, S.C. : Fictional Enterprises / Amazon, 2010.

Canyon wren's rag : fifty years of selected poems, 1960-2010. Charleston, S.C. : Fictional Enterprises / Amazon, 2011.

Bad boy Bill : & his adventures with naughty girls. Charleston, SC : Fictional Enterprises / Amazon, 2011.

Short takes & outtakes : short stories of a father and son. Charleston, S.C. : Fictional Enterprises / Amazon, 2014.

Clockwork Cherries: Haiku to Sonnets with Color Drawings 2011-2012. Fictional Enterprises / Amazon, 2015.

Archeopoetics & Other conundrums. Fictional Enterprises / Amazon, 2017.

Pretty city : a novel of crime & mayhem. Fictional Enterprises / Amazon, 2018.

The Mercy Investigation Series:

    Killer picture postcards. Charleston, S.C. : Fictional Enterprises / Amazon, 2013.

    Gay blade. Charleston, S.C. : Fictional Enterprises / Amazon, 2014.

    Revenge. Charleston, S.C. : Fictional Enterprises / Amazon, 2015.

    Convictions. Fictional Enterprises / Amazon, 2015.

    While You Were Gone. Fictional Enterprises / Amazon, 2016.

    Stiff. Fictional Enterprises / Amazon, 2016.

    Fault Lines. Fictional Enterprises / Amazon, 2017.

    Quintet. Fictional Enterprises / Amazon, 2017.

    The Bagman. Fictional Enterprises / Amazon, 2018.