Ian Maguire Schutzman is twenty-five years old and since age eighteen has spent over three years trekking the globe. He has visited twenty-nine countries and doesn’t intend to stop anytime soon.
Ian entered university as a double major in both theater and creative writing. After taking Spanish and Japanese “just for fun,” he decided to switch to a major in international relations with Spanish and Japanese language.
Since graduating Ian has worked as a volunteer in Peru, a Japanese translator, an intern for a United States senator, and an English Teacher in Japan. Ian’s true passion however, is storytelling, and showing the world what he considers the truest part of himself – his love for world cultures.
Just as books like Lord of Rings brought to life the once mysterious world of old Norse religion and culture, Ian hopes to teach people about world cultures they may have previously thought obscure and difficult to understand. He believes the most compelling way to do this is through writing immersive accounts of his own experiences on the Mythographers, and then drawing from those experiences to fuel his novels.
Drinking beer by a river in southern China, Ian once heard the quote “what is far from your eye is far from your heart.” He strongly believes that every country on earth has a culture that is worth exploring and understanding. Nothing inspires Ian more than sitting in a new place, and listening to stories from a different way of life.
He hopes to share with you his passion for the world and get you to places you may have thought unreachable before.
Jarrod Zenjiro Suda is twenty-four years old and was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. His interest in studying history and writing began when he learned about his Filipino family’s experience in the Bataan Death March and his Japanese family’s experience in American WWII incarceration camps. A desire to better understand these histories led him to conduct interviews with his grandparents, research documents and records at the Manzanar War Relocation Center, and meet his distant relatives in the Philippines.
Jarrod’s curiosity has continued to fuel his explorations. As an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, he studied abroad in Madrid, volunteered in Cochabamba, and interned in Washington, D.C. Since graduating in 2016 with a degree in international relations, he has been living and working in Kyoto as a public school English teacher.
Perhaps Jarrod’s favorite Japanese proverb goes, “the frog in the well knows nothing of the great ocean.” As he ventures outside of his own well and into the unknown, he hopes to uncover the tragic, the bizarre, the inspiring, and all else in between.
The Mythographers 