Sayaka Murata

Sayaka Murata (born August 14, 1979) is a Japanese writer. She is best known for the international bestseller Convenience Store Woman (2016) which has been translated into more than thirty languages worldwide. Murata has won many major literary prizes in Japan, including the Gunzo Prize for New Writers in 2003, the Noma Literary New Face Prize in 2009, the Mishima Yukio Prize in 2013, and the Akutagawa Prize for Convenience Store Woman in 2016. All the English translations of her work are done by Ginny Tapley Takemori. In addition to Convenience Store Woman, Murata's first book to be published in English, Takemori has translated the novels Earthlings and Vanishing World, the short-story collection Life Ceremony, the short stories "Faith", "Survival", and "A Clean Marriage", as well as the New York Times published opinion piece "The Future of Sex Lives in All of Us", among others.