A world-renowned calligrapher and a leading authority on Japanese art, as well as a musician, poet, translator and painter, Stephen Addiss has published 36 books or exhibition catalogs, including Old Taoist: The Life, Art and Poetry of Kodojin (2001), 77 Dances: Japanese Calligraphy by Poets, Monks, and Scholars 1568-1868 (2006) and Haiga: Takebe Socho & the Haiku-Painting Tradition (1991). He holds degrees from Harvard University and the University of Michigan, and taught for 15 years at the University of Kansas before joining the faculty at the University of Richmond in Virginia as Professor of Art and Tucker-Boatwright Professor in the Humanities. He is the recipient of four grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and one from the National Endowment for the Arts.

In his study and practice of poetry, music, painting, calligraphy and ceramics, Stephen has been inspired by the art of the literati, the East Asian scholar-poet-artists who discovered that research and creative expression could deeply enhance each other. “My early years as a musician traveling throughout Asia, Africa and Europe led me to a lifetime interest in how what we learn from other cultures can interact with our own traditions and values to create something bold and new … I became aware that the study of the arts did not have to be separate from their practice; in China and Japan, it is the poet-artists who have been responsible for the great majority of the historical and theoretical studies of their fields.”

Fascinated by haiga, in which a haiku and a visual image come together to reach a deeper expression than either one might alone, Stephen has both written about and created this art form. His paintings, ceramics and calligraphy have been shown internationally in London, Japan, Taiwan, Korea and Beijing, as well as throughout the United States.

Stephen Addiss is a long-time Zen practitioner and has recently edited Zen Sourcebook: Traditional Documents from China, Korea, and Japan (2008).