JLPP 現代日本文学の翻訳・普及事業 Japanese Literature Publishing Project

Biographies of panelists

©Rinko Kawauchi

Kawakami Hiromi: Born in Tokyo, 1958. She made her debut in 1994 with God, which won the first Pascal Newcomer Award for Short Stories. Since then she has been awarded numerous literary prizes, including Akutagawa Prize in 1996 for A Snake Stepped On ; the Deux Magots Literary Prize and Murasaki Shikibu Literature Prize in 1999 for God ; the Ito Sei Literature Prize and Woman Writer Prize in 2000 for Oboreru; the Tanizaki Prize in 2001 for The Briefcase (or Strange Weather in Tokyo); the Minister of Education Award for Fine Arts in 2007 for Manazuru ; the Yomiuri Literary Award in 2015 for Suisei ; the Izumi Kyoka Literary Award in 2016 for Under the Eye of the Big Bird ; and Noma Literary Prize in 2023 for Koi wa hakanai, aruiwa, pūru no soko no sutēki. Her other novels include The Ten Loves of Nishino, The Nakano Thrift Shop, Zarazara, Hazuki-san no Koto, Dokokaraittemo toi hanashi, and Kigen no ii inu, to name a few. Manazuru was translated into English, French, German, and Russian under JLPP. Her works, including the well-received Briefcase (or Strange Weather in Tokyo), have been translated and published worldwide, making her one of the most acclaimed authors.

Stephen Snyder: Translator of Japanese Literature, Professor at Middlebury College Born in 1957. Earned Ph.D. from Yale University. He is the author of Fictions of Desire: Narrative Form in the Novels of Nagai Kafu and co-editor of Oe and Beyond: Fiction in Contemporary Japan. He has translated contemporary Japanese novels by Yoko Ogawa, Kenzaburo Oe, Ryu Murakami, Yu Miri, Kotaro Isaka, to name a few. He also published his translation of Rivalry: A Geisha's Tale by Nagai Kafu and Ashura Girl by Otaro Maijo under JLPP. His translation of Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa was shortlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Translated Literature and the 2020 International Booker Prize.

Tynan Kogane: Editor, New Directions. Tynan Kogane was raised in Seattle and graduated from the New School. He is interested in literary fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, and has recently worked on books by Hiroko Oyamada, Judith Schalansky, Fernanda Melchor, Natalia Ginzburg, Ingeborg Bachmann, Dunya Mikhail, Mathias Énard, Junichiro Tanizaki, Franz Kafka, Alejandra Pizarnik, Rachel Ingalls, Max Blecher, Nicola Gardini, Rabee Jaber, Norman Manea, Eliot Weinberger, and others. Recently, he has published a series of translations of Osamu Dazai's works, which have been very well received.

［New Directions］https://www.ndbooks.com/about/
New Directions Publishing Corp. is an independent book publishing company that was founded in 1936 by James Laughlin. We publish about 40 books annually, many of them translations from foreign languages. We publish experimental fiction, contemporary fiction, modern classics, poetry, and literary nonfiction.

Sam Bett: Translator of Japanese Literature Born in 1986. Graduated from UMass-Amherst, majoring in English and Japanese Language & Literature. In 2015, Sam was awarded Grand Prize in the 2nd JLPP International Translation Competition. His translation work includes the Katanagatari series by NISIOISIN, The Flowers of Buffoonery by Osamu Dazai, and The Rope Artist by Fuminori Nakamura. His translation of Star by Yukio Mishima won the 2019-2020 Japan-US Friendship Commission Prize. He also co-translated Mieko Kawakami's works with David Boyd, including Breasts and Eggs, Heaven, and All the Lovers in the Night. Heaven was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize. Alongside his translation work, he is a co-host of Us&Them, a Brooklyn-based reading series showcasing the work of writers who translate.