• Introduction
• Story List

Introduction

Welcome to 'A Story a Week', the story/essay collection from woodblock printmaker David Bull.

This collection of stories had its genesis in the pieces I submitted to various weekly papers in Tokyo. It seems that my writing style - straightforward and familiar - is well suited to the weekly magazine format, and the published stories got quite good feedback from readers. Writing the pieces became a kind of 'habit' for me, and my list of potential topics just kept growing and growing, so I decided to publish similar pieces on my own, here on this web site.

Most of the stories are accompanied by a recording of myself reading the story, accessible through the speaker icon on each story page. These recordings (in mp3 format) can be downloaded to your own computer if you wish.

A Story A Week began in early 2006 as a subscription series for Japanese people who wanted a way to practice their reading and listening skills. As part of this, for the first few years, the stories were collected every six months into bound books, which were available at my Tokyo exhibitions (at that time being held annually). But after a couple of years of subscription-only, the website was opened up to everybody who had an interest. I kept to the weekly schedule until mid-2015, when the pressure from Mokuhankan, my then new woodblock publishing venture, forced me to pull back and pause this. (I very much liked doing these, and have it in mind that I will pick up again, if I can ever get my life organized in such a way as to allow the time ...)

I hope you find my stories interesting and entertaining. When originally published, the stories were open for people to add their comments/questions, but due to flooding with robot spam, I have now closed the submission form (although previous comments remain readable).

Thank you for your interest in my work!