A US citizen born and raised in Japan, Alban Kojima earned an M.A in musicology from Temple University and an M.S. in information science from Drexel University in Philadelphia. In 1988, he became Japanese Studies Informationist for Penn Libraries at the University of Pennsylvania, at the same time he taught a graduate seminar entitled Japanese Studies Resources and Problems of Research. Since late-October 2012, Kojima has focused on writing. He has published in Tokyo, Japan, Yuzo Kayama and His Music: A Global Fascination (Sairyūsha, 2014) and Alexei Sultanov (Alpha-Bata Books, 2017). Coal Boy is Kojima’s first work of fiction. He lives in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.