Don MacLaren

Don MacLaren’s articles, commentary, stories, poems, interviews and letters to editors have appeared in TIME, Newsweek (International), Business Week (International), The Japan Times, Japan Today, The Tenderloin Times, The Daily Californian, Danse Macabre, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Wilderness House Literary Review, The Write Place At the Write Time and other publications.

He has recently completed a book-length memoir, which focuses on his experiences as an expatriate. It will be published at a date to be announced.

MacLaren lived in Detroit and Grand Rapids, Michigan until he was 19, whereupon his wanderlust led him to quit his job as a press operator in a factory, escape the US Rust Belt and join the US Navy.

In 1988 he graduated as valedictorian at City College of San Francisco with an AS in Film Production. Two years later he received a BA in English from UC Berkeley, where he was a member of the Honor Students’ Society.

In March 1991 he moved to Japan, where he initially taught English. In 1995 he began to work in Tokyo at a trading company as a writer and translator.

In 2001 he left his job at the trading company and after a trip through Europe returned to the United States. He spent most of 2001 to 2010 in New York City, where he worked as a teacher and freelance writer and translator. His students and clients consisted of people from over 75 different countries.

In 2003-04 he spent six months traveling in Latin America, where he studied Spanish and worked freelance as a writer and translator. Between 2008 and 2014 he made several visits to Japan, during which time he worked freelance as an editor, writer, translator and English tutor.

In addition to the jobs mentioned above, MacLaren has worked as a cab driver in Oakland, butcher in Michigan, construction worker and bartender in Japan, janitor and hotel desk clerk in San Francisco, security guard in Dallas, counterperson at Caffe Trieste in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood, wire operator/bookkeeper/trading assistant for the institutional trading desk at the stock brokerage firm Merrill Lynch in Dallas, and other jobs.

MacLaren lived in Jiangsu Province, China from 2010 to 2014, where he taught in high schools. He has divided his time between New York City, China and Japan since July 2014. He currently works as a teacher, writer, editor and translator.

You can learn more about him at:

donmaclaren.com

© Don MacLaren