AUTHOR
Akiko Itoyama
Akiko Itoyama (1966 ~) represents the generation of female authors who emerged after the 1986 passage of the revised Equal Employment Opportunity Act, which sought to do away with gender-based discrimination in the workplace. After graduating from university she joined a household appliance manufacturer. Her experiences in the company's sales force are readily evident in her stories. She began writing while still a company employee and left the firm in 2001.
She made her literary debut in 2003 with It's Only Talk, which received the Bungakukai New Writer's Prize, and has since received the Yasunari Kawabata Literature Prize and the Akutagawa Prize, among others. Akiko Itoyama is currently the most active and brilliant woman writer in the Japanese literary world.
AWARDS
2003 Bungakukai Prize for New Writers, for It's Only Talk (It's Only Talk)
2004 Ministry of Education Award for Art, for Umi no Sennin (The Hermit-sage of the sea)
2004 Kawabata Yasunari Literary Prize, for Fukurokoji no Otoko (Dead-end Man)
2005 Akutagawa Prize, for Oki de Matsu (Waiting in the Offing)