Born in 1977 in Tehran, Kanako Nishigrew up in Osaka and Cairo, and recently returned to Tokyo after living in Vancouver. A writer and artist, she has published more than two dozen books in Japanese, including novels, short stories, essays, and children’s books.
Her 2023 memoir, Looking for Spiders (and Clouds), won the Japan Booksellers’ Award for Nonfiction and the Yomiuri Prize for Literature. Translations of her work in English have appeared in Freeman’s, Granta, Slice, Brick, and Literary Hub, as well as Words Without Borders.
