大志を抱け！

Bilingual Writer. Here is her story.

Isoko Durbin, the founder of Bilingual Writer & Japanese Textbooks, was born in Japan. She moved to the United States and studied English. In 2005, she got her bachelor’s degree with an English major and linguistics concentration from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. After her graduation, she became a Japanese-English translator in Kansas City. In 2009, she published her first Japanese grammar book Speak Like Native Speakers Japanese Verb Conjugation I.

After losing her translation job in 2007, she started teaching Japanese in a private lesson base. She immediately realized that she was born to do the job, of teaching Japanese to English speakers. Since she was a little girl, Isoko has always loved to read and write. She passionately wrote all the study materials for her lessons. When her students needed to know basic Japanese grammar, she wrote to explain it. When her student wanted to study kanji, she wrote the study material. These writings inspired her to create “Bilingual Writer & Japanese Textbooks.”

“Bilingual Writer” means a lot to Isoko. For her, the language must be two, not one. Speaking just one language, either Japanese or English, does not complete her. She chose the common word “writer,” because she believes literature and linguistics are connected. She studied linguistics. She was a translator. And she teaches the Japanese language. But she also writes stories about her life, too. None of them can be separated. So “Bilingual Writer” completes her.

She launched her online business “Bilingual Writer & Japanese Textbooks” in 2024. Bilingual Writer & Japanese Textbooks publishes Japanese textbooks for English speakers.