Kaori Fujino, a lifelong resident of Kyoto, is best known for fiction that reimagines tropes from horror, science fiction, Hollywood thrillers, urban legends and fairy tales. She holds an MA in aesthetics and art theory from Doshisha University. In 2013, Fujino was awarded the Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s most prominent literary prize, for Nails and Eyes. In the fall of 2017, she was in residence at the University of Iowa’s prestigious International Writing Program. Her stories have appeared in English translation in Granta, Monkey and the US-Japan Women’s Journal.
Kendall Heitzman is an associate professor of Japanese literature and culture at the University of Iowa. He has translated stories and essays by Nori Nakagami, Tomoka Shibasaki, and Yusho Takiguchi. He is the author of Enduring Postwar: Yasuoka Shotaro and Literary Memory in Japan. His translation of “The Little Woods in Fukushima” by Hideo Furukawa appears in Monkey magazine.