Benjamin Freeman is an artist, an athlete, and a writer. While at Rhodes College, he dedicated himself to his studies in English. For his cumulative study of Creative Writing, Old English, and Southern Gothic literature, he was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Honors Society and received the John R. Benish Award for Excellence in the Study of English (2020).
After leaving college, Freeman began teaching at Lincoln Preparatory Academy in Chandler, Arizona. In his spare time, he wrote about work-culture and education based on his own experience teaching. His work also looks at human nature and existentialism.
Though Freeman enjoyed teaching at Lincoln Prep, he had long held a dream of living in Asia. After two years of work at Lincoln Prep, Freeman pursued this dream by earning a position as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) in the Japanese English Teaching program (JET). He moved to Gunma, Japan, in 2022 and immediately began work at a middle school. Teaching in Japan was both challenging and very rewarding. Fascinated by the cultural differences between Japan and the US, Freeman read prominent Japanese authors including Sayaka Murata, Mieko Kawakami, and Haruki Murakami to better understand the perspective of Japanese people and the relevant social issues of the day. These authors inspired him to write his own stories. In Japan, two of his stories were published by literary magazines, “Beached Self” in Esentrika and “The Barn” in Wilderness House Literary Review Vol. 8, No. 2.
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