Kyoko Mori is the author of four nonfiction books, the latest of which — "Cat and Bird: a memoir" — is out now from Belt Publishing. Her essays have appeared in Conjunctions, Harvard Review ...

What do you do when your childhood relationship with your parents has been so painful that you have grown up to be an adult who avoids all emotion? This is the basic premise of Kyoko Mori's first ...

Kyoko Mori. Henry Holt & Company, $24 (279pp) ISBN 978-0-8050-4080-7. Simple language and strong emotion are effectively used to relate the story of Maya Ishida, a 35-year-old Japanese-American ...

Most parents in this book go by title: "Dad," "Ma," "my folks." The only other named parent in Apple, Tree is Kyoko Mori's abusive, egotistical father, Hiroshi.

Mark Thalman reads with Ritz Kyoko Mori, Shelby Nicole and Bill Siverly at 6:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 29, at Moonstruck Chocolate Cafe, 45 South State St., Lake Oswego.