Eiko Kadono (角野栄子) is a Japanese author of children's literature, picture books, non-fiction and essays in Shōwa and Heisei period Japan. Kadono was born in Tokyo, and attended the Nihon Fukushi University in Aichi prefecture, followed by a degree in English literature from Waseda University. After graduation in 1960 at the age of 25, she emigrated to Brazil, where she spent two years. She wrote a nonfiction story called Brazil and My Friend Luizinho based on her experience at that time, about a Brazilian boy who loves dancing samba. This was her maiden work, but it was not published until 1970. Most of her works are books for children. Her first successful children's book published Ôdorabô Bula Bula shi [The Robber Bla-Bla] was published i
Kōbō Abe (安部 公房 Abe Kōbō), pseudonym of Kimifusa Abe, was a Japanese writer, playwright, photographer, and inventor.
He was the son of a doctor and studied medicine at Tokyo University. He never practised however, giving it up to join a literary group that aimed to apply surrealist techniques to Marxist ideology.
Abe has been often compared to Franz Kafka and Alberto Moravia for his surreal, often nightmarish explorations of individuals in contemporary society and his modernist sensibilities.
He was first published as a poet in 1947 with Mumei shishu ("Poems of an unknown poet") and as a novelist the following year with Owarishi michi no shirube ni ("The Road Sign at the End of the Street"), which established his reputation. Though he did muc
Ryū Murakami (村上 龍) is a Japanese novelist and filmmaker. He is not related to Haruki Murakami or Takashi Murakami.
Murakami's first work, the short novel Almost Transparent Blue, written while he was still a student, deals with promiscuity and drug use among disaffected Japanese youth. Critically acclaimed as a new style of literature, it won the newcomer's literature prize in 1976 despite some observers decrying it as decadent. Later the same year, Blue won the Akutagawa Prize, going on to become a best seller. In 1980, Murakami published the much longer novel Coin Locker Babies, again to critical acclaim.
Takashi Miike's feature film Audition (1999) was based on one of his novels. Murakami reportedly liked it so much he gave Miike his bles
Banana Yoshimoto (よしもと ばなな or 吉本 ばなな) is the pen name of Mahoko Yoshimoto (吉本 真秀子), a Japanese contemporary writer. She writes her name in hiragana. (See also 吉本芭娜娜 (Chinese).)
Along with having a famous father, poet Takaaki Yoshimoto, Banana's sister, Haruno Yoiko, is a well-known cartoonist in Japan. Growing up in a liberal family, she learned the value of independence from a young age.
She graduated from Nihon University's Art College, majoring in Literature. During that time, she took the pseudonym "Banana" after her love of banana flowers, a name she recognizes as both "cute" and "purposefully androgynous."
Despite her success, Yoshimoto remains a down-to-earth and obscure figure. Whenever she appears in public she eschews make-up and dre
Lisa Tuttle taught a science fiction course at the City Lit College, part of London University, and has tutored on the Arvon courses. She was residential tutor at the Clarion West SF writing workshop in Seattle, USA. She has published six novels and two short story collections. Many of her books have been translated into French and German editions.
After dropping out of school and living on the streets for some years, Hitomi Kanehara started to write. Her novels have won several prizes in Japan. The first novel Snakes and Earings won the Akutagawa Prize and the Subaru Prize and it sold a million copies.
John Burnside was a Scottish writer. He was the author of nine collections of poetry and five works of fiction. Burnside achieved wide critical acclaim, winning the Whitbread Poetry Award in 2000 for The Asylum Dance which was also shortlisted for the Forward and T.S. Eliot prizes. He left Scotland in 1965, returning to settle there in 1995. In the intervening period he worked as a factory hand, a labourer, a gardener and, for ten years, as a computer systems designer. Laterly, he lived in Fife with his wife and children and taught Creative Writing, Literature and Ecology courses at the University of St. Andrews.
Carys Davies's debut novel, West, was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, runner-up for the McKitterick Prize, and winner of the Wales Book of the Year for Fiction. Her second novel, The Mission House, was first published in the UK in 2020 where it was The Sunday Times Novel of the Year.
She is also the author of two collections of short stories, Some New Ambush and The Redemption of Galen Pike, which won the 2015 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and the 2015 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. She is the recipient of the Royal Society of Literature's V.S. Pritchett Prize, the Society of Authors' Olive Cook Short Story Award, a Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library, and is a member of the Folio Academy. Her fic
Andrej Nikolaidis was born in 1974 in Sarajevo, to a mixed Montenegrin-Greek family. Until the age of six, he lived in the city of Ulcinj, where he returned in 1992 after the war in Bosnia erupted. Since 1994, he has written for regional independent and liberal media, as well as for cultural magazines. He is considered by many to be one of the most influential intellectuals of the younger generation in the region, known for his anti-war activism and for his promotion of the rights of minorities.
Nikolaidis also publicly defended the victims of police torture, which resulted in his receiving many threats, including a death threat during a live radio appearance. He has often stated that he considers freedom of speech to be the basis of freedom
Izumi Suzuki was born in 1949. After dropping out of high school she worked in a factory before finding success and infamy as a model and actress. Her acting credits include both pink films and classics of 1970s Japanese cinema. When the father of her children, the jazz musician Kaoru Abe, died of an overdose, Suzuki’s creative output went into hyperdrive and she began producing the irreverent and punky short fiction, novels and essays that ensured her reputation would outstrip and outlast that of the men she had been associated with in her early career. She took her own life in 1986, leaving behind a decade’s worth of groundbreaking and influential writing.
Fernanda Trías (Montevideo, 12 de octubre de 1976) es una escritora uruguaya. Es profesora de inglés y traductora certificada.
Fernanda Trías is a Uruguayan writer. She was born in Montevideo in 1976. She is the author of three novels and two short story collections. In 2004 she won a Unesco scholarship to write in Camac, an artists’ residence in Marnay-sur-Seine. She lived for five years in the medieval village of Provins and a few months in London. She spent one year in Berlin and two years in Buenos Aires. Trías earned a Master’s degree in creative writing from New York University and was disciple of the Uruguayan writer Mario Levrero. She integrated anthologies of new narrative in Colombia, the United States, Uruguay, Peru, Germany (Neu
Bae Myung-hoon (배명훈) is an acclaimed South Korean writer of science fiction known for his inventive world-building and biting political humor. His debut story collection, Tower (타워, 2009; English edition: Honford Star, 2021), is the first Korean science fiction book by a single author to be translated into English. Bae has written more than a dozen novels and short-story collections, an essay collection, and a sci-fi children’s book.
Natsuko Imamura is a Japanese writer. She has been nominated three times for the Akutagawa Prize, and won the prize in 2019. She has also won the Dazai Osamu Prize, the Mishima Yukio Prize, the Kawai Hayao Story Prize, and the Noma Literary New Face Prize.
Hiroko Oyamada (小山田浩子) is a Japanese author. She won the Shincho Prize for New Writers for The Factory, which was drawn from her experiences working as a temp for an automaker’s subsidiary. Her following novel, The Hole, won the Akutagawa Prize.
Sayaka Murata (in Japanese, 村田 沙耶香) is one of the most exciting up-and-coming writers in Japan today. She herself still works part time in a convenience store, which gave her the inspiration to write Convenience Store Woman (Konbini Ningen). She debuted in 2003 with Junyu (Breastfeeding), which won the Gunzo Prize for new writers. In 2009 she won the Noma Prize for New Writers with Gin iro no uta (Silver Song), and in 2013 the Mishima Yukio Prize for Shiro-oro no machi no, sono hone no taion no (Of Bones, of Body Heat, of Whitening City). Convenience Store Woman won the 2016 Akutagawa Award. Murata has two short stories published in English (both translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori): "Lover on the Breeze" (Ruptured Fiction(s) of the Earthqu
Emma Glass was born in Swansea. She studied English literature and creative writing at the University of Kent, then decided to become a nurse and went back to study children's nursing at Swansea University. She lives in South London and is a research nurse specialist at Evelina London Children's Hospital. Her debut novel Peach will be published in February 2018.
Emi Yagi is an editor at a Japanese women’s magazine. She was born in 1988 and lives in Tokyo. Diary of a Void is her first novel; it won the Dazai Osamu Prize, awarded annually to the best debut work of fiction.
Born in 1993, Cheon Seon-ran is a beloved author by the ‘MZ Generation’ (Millennials and Gen Z) of South Korea. A graduate from the department of creative writing in Anyang Arts High School, she holds a master’s degree in creative writing from Dankook University. She dreams of living in a world where humans become the minority in a world of flora and fauna. She is always thinking what the end of the world will look like, and what is happening elsewhere in the universe. One day, she decides to pen her thoughts down in this novel. A Thousand Blues won the 4th Korea Sci-fi Literature Award. She is the author of several novels and short-story collections.
Rie Qudan or Rie Kudan (九段理江) (born September 27, 1990, in Saitama, Japan) is a Japanese novelist. In 2024, Qudan won the 170th Akutagawa Prize for her novel Tōkyō-to Dōjō Tō[b] ("Tokyo Sympathy Tower"). She stated that about 5% of the novel was written by artificial intelligence.
Saou Ichikawa graduated from the School of Human Sciences, Waseda University. Her bestselling debut novel, Hunchback, won the Bungakukai Prize for New Writers, and she is the first author with a physical disability to receive the Akutagawa Prize, one of Japan’s top literary awards. She has congenital myopathy and uses a ventilator and an electric wheelchair. Ichikawa lives outside Tokyo.
Bae Myung-hoon (배명훈) is an acclaimed South Korean writer of science fiction known for his inventive world-building and biting political humor. His debut story collection, Tower (타워, 2009; English edition: Honford Star, 2021), is the first Korean science fiction book by a single author to be translated into English. Bae has written more than a dozen novels and short-story collections, an essay collection, and a sci-fi children’s book.
After dropping out of school and living on the streets for some years, Hitomi Kanehara started to write. Her novels have won several prizes in Japan. The first novel Snakes and Earings won the Akutagawa Prize and the Subaru Prize and it sold a million copies.
김숨 (Kim Soom) was born in 1974, and debuted as a writer when her stories were selected for publications by Daejeon Ilbo in 1997 and Munhakdongne in 1998. A prolific writer, she has published numerous short story collections and novels to date, including the most recent collection Your Saviour, and the novels One Person, L's Sneakers, and The Flowing Letter. She is the recipient of the Hyundae Munhak Prize, the Daesan Literature Prize, Yi Sang Prize, and Dongri Literature Prize.
