MIEKO KAWAKAMI is the acclaimed author of the internationally best-selling novel Breasts and Eggs, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and one of Time's Best 10 Books of 2020. Her other novels, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd, include Heaven, shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize, and All the Lovers in the Night, a finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. In 2024, Sisters in Yellow won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature. Her books, translated into over forty languages, are known for their insights into the female body, and philosophical questions surrounding gender, class, and ethics in modern society. Born in Osaka, Kawakami lives in Tokyo, Japan.

LAUREL TAYLOR is a translator, poet, and researcher. She has translated works by Kaori Fujino, Minae Mizumura, Shibasaki Tomoka, and Aoko Matsudo, among others.

HITOMI YOSHIO is the translator of Natsuko Imamura's This Is Amiko, Do You Copy? and the co-translator of Mieko Kawakami's Ashes of Spring.