Tomoka Shibasaki

Tomoka Shibasaki (柴崎友香) is a Japanese novelist born in Osaka in 1973. She graduated from Osaka Prefecture University and worked an office job for four years before turning to writing full-time, publishing her first short story in 1999. Her debut novel, Kyō no Dekigoto (A Day on the Planet), appeared in 2000 and was adapted into a film in 2004.

She won the MEXT Award for New Artists in 2006 for Sono Machi no Ima wa, the Noma Literary New Face Prize in 2010 for Nete mo Samete mo (later adapted into the film Asako I & II), and the 151st Akutagawa Prize in 2014 for her novella Haru no Niwa, published in English translation as Spring Garden by Pushkin Press.