About S. Naoyuki Matsuba

Stephen Naoyuki Matsuba is a writer living in Vancouver, Canada.

Being a novel writer has been Stephen’s lifelong dream. While in elementary school, he loved to write stories and became an avid reader. Over the last ten years, he has actively pursued his lifetime goal by researching and consuming books on becoming an author, attending writers workshops and conferences to hone his craft, and joining writing groups to network and get feedback from other writers.

After high school, he began pursuing a career geared towards academe earning B.A. and M.A. degrees at the University of British Columbia in English Literature. It was while doing his Masters degree that he was exposed to computer technology as a research tool. Later attending York University (Toronto, Canada), he worked on a Ph.D in Computational Linguistics and English Literature exploring computational models for determining allusions in Shakespeare. his interests included computational linguistics, artificial intelligence and cognitive science, computer applications in humanities research and education, VR, and multimedia design.

Stephen’s various interests and experiences are infused in his work. Born in the late 1950s, he saw the world change for the better and for the worst. From the assassination of a president to the first man walking on the moon, from the first chatbots to ChatGTP, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the rise of neo-fascism—these and other events have coloured his world view as well as influenced his stories.

He has been an active member of the BDSM world for over thirty five years, and studied Japanese bondage from highly regarded teachers based in Japan, Europe, and North America. His journey with single tails started with John Ireland, and has grown through self-study and teaching. He is recognized in the BDSM community for his kinbaku and single tail play, and has taught workshops on rope and other forms of BDSM play in both the U.S.A. and Canada.  

Stephen has pioneered innovative artistic projects beyond writing. He and Bernie Roehl developed a VRML-based theatre production called VRML Dream. It was a thirty minute adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream multicast live, and was the first long-form entertainment production to be streamed over the Internet. It used VRML and custom developed Java applications to allow anyone with a 150 Mhz Pentium computer and a 28.8 modem connection to watch the play as it was being performed.  A number of articles have been written about the project including the August 1998 issue of Computer Graphics World.  He also created created a series of virtual reality spaces called “Construct(s) and Même-ing: An Essay in Three Dimensions”. “Construct(s)” was also displayed at Toronto’s InterAccess Gallery in February 1997.