About

Erica holds a Masters Degree in Library Science and a B.A. in Comparative Literature, and is a full-time researcher for a Fortune 100 company. She has lectured at dozens of conventions and presented at film festivals, notably the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. She has participated in an academic lecture series at MIT, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Harvard University, Kanagawa University, and others.

She has edited manga for JManga, Seven Seas and Udon Entertainment, most recently Riyoko Ikeda’s epic historical classic, The Rose of Versailles.

Erica has written about Yuri for Japanese literary journal Eureka, Animericamagazine, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund,  Dark Horse, and contributed to Forbes, Slate, Huffington Post, Hooded Utilitarian, The Mary Sue, Anime Feminist, Anime Herald and Anime News Network online. She has written news and event reports, interviews Yuri creators and reviews Yuri anime, manga and related media on her blog Okazu since 2002 and is the author of By Your Side: The First 100 Year of Yuri Anime and Manga, out now from Journey Press.

Highlights of my CV are available on my website. Full CV upon request. If you’d like me to speak at your university, convention, organization or school, please contact me.

 

 

 

Community Standards & Rules for Commenting on Okazu

Be Nice – Add Value – Show Respect

Here at Okazu we strongly encourage commenting, including dissension, discussion and alternate points of view. In order to keep this community alive and thriving we have three basic requirements for commenting:

 

1) No linking to sites with illegal or illicit content.

Links that are inappropriate, including links to your own profile that include spam, porn, link farms, or other crap, will not be accepted.

Because we at Okazu and Yuricon focus on supporting the industry with actual money and do not believe people have an innate right to entertainment, comments that talk about “reading” a manga that has not been officially licensed, when you clearly do not read Japanese, are unwelcome.  This may be cumulative. When you’re asked to stop posting such things, have a long think about what supporting the industry means and how reading something that you didn’t pay for and the manga artist makes nothing on really is not support.  Your compliance is mandatory. ^_^

 

2) No ad hominem attacks or personal insults directed at fellow commenters.

I am completely aware that there are commenters who will gain satisfaction out of writing personal insults at me. In general, I don’t care. Your rage cannot really touch me. In general harassment only makes the harasser look ridiculous.

I do care if you attack fellow commenters in the same way. Show respect to the other members of this community, or your comment will be deleted. You can disagree with a person without having to insult them.

This guideline also bans comments with any expressions of prejudice, including, but not limited to: transphobia, homophobia, fatphobia, misogyny, misogynoir, racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, white supremacy, religious intolerance or bias against gender or sexual minorities. Pedophilia/pederasty are explicitly not included in this list and apologist comments are unwelcome and will be removed.

 

3) Commenting on Okazu is a privilege, not a right.

If you abuse the privilege it will be removed. The rules of fandom here are four-fold:

Just because you like something, doesn’t mean it’s good.

Just because you don’t like something, doesn’t mean it’s bad.

And just because something is bad doesn’t mean you can’t like it.

Just because something is good, doesn’t mean you have to like it.

When you comment here, you are participating in a community. If you cannot Be Nice, then fake it by Showing Respect even if you do not actually have any. Above all, your comments should Add Value to the community.

Thank you to everyone who has added so much Value to Okazu over the years – here’s to many more great conversations!
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