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JEFFREY ANGLES (b. 1971) is a professor of Japanese language and literature at Western Michigan University. His translation of Hiromi Itō’s novel The Thorn Puller was published under the Monkey imprint with Stone Bridge Press in 2022. He has also translated eleven other books, including two poetry collections by Hiromi Itō: Killing Kanoko and Wild Grass on the Riverbank (Tilted Axis, 2020). Angles is also a poet; his book of Japanese-language poems Watashi no hizukehenkōsen (My International Date Line) won the 68th Yomiuri Prize for Literature. His essay “Finding Mother” appears in vol. 1 of MONKEY, and excerpts from The Thorn Puller appear in vols. 1 and 2. His translations of poems by Mutsuo Takahashi are featured in vol. 3 of MONKEY, and his translations of microfiction by Taruho Inagaki and Haruki Murakami’s “The Zombie” appear in vol. 4; vol. 5 includes his translation of “Wild Boar” by Hiromi Itō.

SONJA ARNTZEN (b. 1945) taught Japanese literature at the University of Alberta and the University of Toronto. Now living in Vancouver, she writes poetry and continues her research in Japanese literature of the Heian and medieval eras. Her books include Ikkyū and the Crazy Cloud Anthology (Tokyo University Press, 1986; revised and expanded edition, Quirin Press, 2022), The Kagerō Diary (University of Michigan, 1997), and The Sarashina Diary: A Woman’s Life in Eleventh-Century Japan (Columbia University Press, 2014; Reader’s Edition, 2018). Her current project is a new translation of Ochikubo monogatari.

B

POLLY BARTON (b. 1984) is a literary translator and writer, based in the UK. Her translation of A Hundred Years and a Day by Tomoka Shibasaki will be published under the Monkey imprint with Stone Bridge Press in 2025. Other recent translations include Butter by Asako Yuzuki, Mild Vertigo by Mieko Kanai, Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda, There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura, and So We Look to the Sky by Misumi Kubo. In 2021 she published Fifty Sounds, a personal dictionary of the Japanese language. Her translations of stories by Aoko Matsuda and Tomoka Shibasaki appear in vols. 1–5 of MONKEY, and her translations of stories by Kikuko Tsumura appear in vols. 2, 3, and 5.

SAM BETT (b. 1986) writes and translates fiction. He is a founder and host of Us&Them, the quarterly Brooklyn-based reading series devoted to showcasing the work of writers who also translate. In 2016 he was awarded Grand Prize by the Japanese government in the 2nd JLPP International Translation Competition for his translation of “A Peddler of Tears” by Yōko Ogawa, which appears in vol. 7 of Monkey Business. His translation of Yukio Mishima’s Star (New Directions) won the 2019 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. With David Boyd, he co-translated the novels of Mieko Kawakami: Breasts and Eggs (2020), Heaven (2021), and All the Lovers in the Night (2022). He translated the essay “Every Reading, Every Sound, Every Sight” by Jun’ichi Konuma for MONKEY, vol. 2.

MICHAEL K. BOURDAGHS (b. 1961) is a professor of Japanese literature and culture at the University of Chicago. His book Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical Prehistory of J-Pop was published by Columbia University Press in 2012 and has been translated into Japanese. The Dawn That Never Comes: Shimazaki Tōson and Japanese Nationalism was published by Columbia in 2003.

DAVID BOYD (b. 1981) is an associate professor of translation and Japanese studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His translation of Takaoka’s Travels by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa was published under the Monkey imprint with Stone Bridge Press in 2024. He has translated three novellas by Hiroko Oyamada: The Factory (2019), The Hole (2020), and Weasels in the Attic (2022). He won the 2022 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for his translation of The Hole. With Sam Bett, he has co-translated three novels by Mieko Kawakami: Breasts and Eggs (2020), Heaven (2021), and All the Lovers in the Night (2022). Heaven was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2022. His translations of Kuniko Mukōda’s “Nori and Eggs for Breakfast” and Kanoko Okamoto’s “Sushi” appear in vol. 1 of MONKEY. For vol. 2, he contributed an excerpt from Takaoka’s Travels. His translations of Hiroko Oyamada’s stories appear in vols. 1–5. For vols. 3–5, he co-translated stories by Midori Osaki with Asa Yoneda.

ROSE BUNDY (1951–2021) was Professor Emerita of East Asian Studies, Kalamazoo College, at the time of her death on March 17, 2021. Her scholarly work primarily focused on waka, and she published on the poetry of Japan’s medieval court as well as on the issue of gender in poetry contests of the same period. She also published a number of translations of the poetry of Fujiwara Shunzei and Shikishi Naishinnō in the journal Transference and a study and translation of Izumi Shikibu’s “Gojusshu waka” (Fifty-Poem Sequence), in which the poet mourns the death of her lover Prince Atsumichi (Japanese Language and Literature, 2020). She translated a number of works by Yūko Tsushima; an excerpt from the 1987 novella Hikari kagayaku itten o (A Single Point of Brilliant Light) appears in vol. 3 of MONKEY.

C

ANDREW CAMPANA (b. 1989) is an assistant professor of Japanese literature at Cornell University. He has been published widely as a translator and as a poet in both English and Japanese. Expanding Verse: Japanese Poetry at Media’s Edge (University of California Press, 2024) explores how poets have engaged with new technologies such as cinema, tape recording, the internet, and augmented reality. His collection “Seven Modern Poets on Food” was published in vol. 1 of MONKEY, “Five Modern Poets on Travel” in vol. 2, “Four Modern Poets on Encounters with Nature” in vol. 3, “Eight Modern Haiku Poets on Music” in vol. 4, and “Five Modern Haiku Poets on Encounters with Creatures” in vol. 5.

CHRIS CORKER (b. 1985) is a British-Canadian writer and translator of Japanese fiction and nonfiction. He is currently writing his doctoral dissertation on the relationship between nostalgia and natural disaster in Japanese literature and film at York University. His translation of an essay by Kengo Kuma is included in Touch Wood: Material, Architecture, Future, edited by Carla Ferrer et al. (Zurich: Lars Müller, 2022). His translation of poetry by Keijirō Suga appears in vol. 3 of MONKEY, and his translations of poems by Toshiko Hirata, Mizuki Misumi, and Shii appear in vol. 4. His translation of “Bearman” by Natsuki Ikezawa is featured in vol. 5.

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JAMES DORSEY (b. 1961) is associate professor of Japanese literature at Dartmouth College. His publications include Critical Aesthetics: Kobayashi Hideo, Modernity, and Wartime Japan, published in 2009 as a Harvard East Asian Monograph. He is also the co-editor of Literary Mischief: Sakaguchi Ango, Culture, and the War (Lexington Books). His translation of "Sleepyville" by Mimei Ogawa appears in vol. 2 of Monkey Business.

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MICHAEL EMMERICH (b. 1975) teaches Japanese literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. An award-winning translator, he has rendered into English books by Gen’ichirō Takahashi, Hiromi Kawakami, and Hideo Furukawa, among others. He is the author of The Tale of Genji: Translation, Canonization, and World Literature (2013) and Tentekomai: bungaku wa hi kurete michi tōshi (2018); the editor of Read Real Japanese Fiction (2008) and Short Stories in Japanese: New Penguin Parallel Text (2011); and the co-editor of BeHere 1942: A New Lens on the Japanese American Incarceration (2022). His translations of Masatsugu Ono, Makoto Takayanagi, and others are featured in Monkey Business and MONKEY.

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TERRY GALLAGHER (b. 1956) is a translator from German and Japanese to English. He has translated works by Jiro Asada, Takuji Ichikawa, Otsuichi, and Toh EnJoe, among others. His translation of Toh EnJoe’s Self-Reference ENGINE won the Japan–U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for Translation of Japanese Literature (2015) and the Philip K. Dick Award Special Citation (2014).

MORGAN GILES (b. 1987) is a literary translator and critic based in London. Her translation of Yu Miri’s Tokyo Ueno Station (Tilted Axis / Riverhead) won the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2020, and she is currently at work on Yu Miri’s The End of August, forthcoming from Tilted Axis. She has also translated short fiction by authors including Hideo Furukawa, Hitomi Kanehara, and Nao-cola Yamazaki, with work appearing in Granta, Wasafiri, and Words Without Borders, among other literary journals. Her criticism regularly appears in the Times Literary Supplement. She translated “My First Trip,” a collection of short essays, for MONKEY, vol. 2.

TED GOOSSEN (b. 1948) is a literary translator, professor emeritus at York University in Toronto, and one of the founding editors of Monkey Business and MONKEY New Writing from Japan. He is the editor of The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories. He translated Haruki Murakami’s Wind/Pinball and The Strange Library, and co-translated (with Philip Gabriel) Men Without Women and Killing Commendatore. His translations of Hiromi Kawakami’s People from My Neighborhood and Naoya Shiga’s Reconciliation were published in 2020. His translation of Dragon Palace by Hiromi Kawakami was published under the MONKEY imprint with Stone Bridge Press in 2023. His translations of Murakami, Shiga, Kawakami, and others are featured in every issue of Monkey Business and in MONKEY, vols. 1–5.

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GITTE MARIANNE HANSEN (b. 1974) teaches Japanese literature, popular culture, and translation at Newcastle University. In 2018 she led the project Eyes on Murakami, which brought together translators, artists, filmmakers, and researchers of Japanese literature. She has written Femininity, Self-harm and Eating Disorders in Japan (Routledge, 2017) and co-edited Murakami Haruki and Our Years of Pilgrimage (Routledge, 2021, with Michael Tsang). Her translation of “Kid Sister” by Yūko Tsushima appears in the 2012 issue of Words Without Borders. Her translation of “Creta Kano” by Haruki Murakami is featured in MONKEY, vol. 3.

KENDALL HEITZMAN (b. 1973) is an associate professor of Japanese literature and culture at the University of Iowa. He has translated stories and essays by Yūshō Takiguchi, Li Kotomi, and Tomoka Shibasaki, among others. He is the author of Enduring Postwar: Yasuoka Shōtarō and Literary Memory in Japan (Vanderbilt University Press, 2019). His translation of Kaori Fujino’s Nails and Eyes was published by Pushkin Press in 2023 and won the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize. His translations of the work of Hideo Furukawa appear in MONKEY, vols. 3–5.

LISA HOFMANN-KURODA (b. 1987) is a literary translator. Born in Tokyo, raised in Texas, she received her BA from Wesleyan University and her PhD from UC Berkeley. She is an active member of the ALTA BIPOC Translators’ Caucus and a two-time graduate of the British Centre for Literary Translation. With Allison Markin Powell, she is the translator of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s Kappa (New Directions, 2023). Her translations of Shun Medoruma, Sachiko Kishimoto, and Yōko Uema appear in The Baffler, Chicago Review, and Guernica. Her translations of Natsuo Kirino’s The Swallow Does Not Return (Knopf) and Yōko Tawada’s Exophony (New Directions) will be published in 2024.

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HANA KIM (b. 1976) is the director of the Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library at the University of Toronto and the editor of Asian Canadian Voices: Facets of Diversity (2022). A poet and translator, Kim received the Sunshik Min Prize at the 2008 Min Chapbook Translation Competition, held jointly by Harvard University and Tamal Vista Publications, as well as the 41st Modern Korean Literature Translation Award for poetry from Korea Times. Her translations are included in Love Is the Pain of Feverish Flowers (2016); her own poetry has been published in Ricepaper Magazine, Variety Crossing, and Han Kŭt: Critical Art and Writing by Korean Canadian Women (2007).

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CHRISTOPHER LOWY (b. 1986) is an Assistant Professor of Japanese Studies at Carnegie Mellon University. He regularly publishes essays in Gendai Shisho and Eureka, and is currently co-authoring an essay series on the architecture of written Japanese with Konno Shinji. His translation of "Peter and Janis" by Tomoka Shibasaki appears in vol. 7 of Monkey Business.

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SAM MALISSA (b. 1981) holds a PhD in Japanese literature from Yale University. His translations include Bullet Train by Kōtaro Isaka (Harvill Secker, 2021), The End of the Moment We Had by Toshiki Okada (Pushkin Press, 2018), and short fiction by Shun Medoruma, Hideo Furukawa, and Masatsugu Ono. His translations of stories by Kyōhei Sakaguchi appear in vols. 1–5 of MONKEY.

MARGARET MITSUTANI (b. 1953) is a translator living in Tokyo. Her translations of short stories by Kyōko Hayashi have appeared in Manoa and Prairie Schooner. She has also translated works by Kenzaburō Ōe, Mitsuyo Kakuta, and Yōko Tawada. Her translation of Tawada’s The Emissary (New Directions, 2018) won both the National Book Award for Translated Literature and the Miyoshi Award. Tawada’s Scattered All Over the Earth (New Directions, 2022), the first volume of a trilogy, was short-listed for the National Book Award for Translated Literature. Suggested in the Stars, volume two of the trilogy, is forthcoming from New Directions. Her translation of Sachiko Kishimoto’s “Tamba-Sasayama” appears in MONKEY, vol. 5.

RYAN SHALDJIAN MORRISON (b. 1979) teaches Japanese literature at Nagoya University of Foreign Studies. His PhD thesis at the University of Tokyo focused on the Japanese modernist writer Jun Ishikawa. He has translated the work of Gen’ichirō Takahashi, Hideo Furukawa and Aoko Matsuda, among others. Most recently, he translated The Japanese Linguistic Landscape: Reflections on Quintessential Words by Susumu Nakanishi (2019).

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LUCY NORTH (b. 1960) is a British translator of Japanese fiction and nonfiction. Her translations include Toddler Hunting and Other Stories by Taeko Kōno (New Directions, 1996; 2018); Record of a Night Too Brief, a collection of three stories by Hiromi Kawakami (Pushkin Press, 2017); and Natsuko Imamura’s 2019 Akutagawa Prize–winning The Woman in the Purple Skirt (Penguin, 2021), which won a Lindsley and Masao Miyoshi Translation Prize in 2022. Her translations have appeared in Granta, Words Without Borders, The Southern Review, and in several anthologies, including Found in Translation: 100 of the Finest Short Stories Ever Translated (Head of Zeus, 2018). 

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CODY POULTON (b. 1955) is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, specializing in Japanese performance. He currently serves as Director of the Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies at Doshisha University. He has translated kabuki as well as contemporary drama by Betsuyaku Minoru, Kara Jūrō and many others. He edited and was principal translator for Citizens of Tokyo: Six Plays by Oriza Hirata. He is the author of Spirits of Another Sort: The Plays of Izumi Kyōka and A Beggar’s Art: Scripting Modernity in Japan, 1900–1930. He is also co-editor, with Mitsuya Mori and J. Thomas Rimer, of The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Drama, a contributing editor to The Cambridge History of Japanese Theatre, and co-editor of Okada Toshiki and Japanese Theatre. He translated “Black Space, the Sound of Rain” by Comes in a Box, for vol. 7 of Monkey Business.

ALLISON MARKIN POWELL (b. 1973) is best known for her translations of Hiromi Kawakami, which include The Nakano Thrift Shop, Parade: A Folktale, Strange Weather in Tokyo (aka The Briefcase), and The Ten Loves of Mr Nishino. She also translated Schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai and three novels by Fuminori Nakamura: The Boy in the Earth, The Gun, and Last Winter We Parted. She was the guest editor for the first Japan issue of Words without Borders (May 2009), and she maintains the website Japanese Literature in English.

ROGER PULVERS (b. 1944) is a novelist, playwright, theater director, and translator. He has published more than fifty books, including the novels The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn and Liv and his autobiography, The Unmaking of an American. He is a noted scholar and translator of Kenji Miyazawa; his translation Strong in the Rain: Selected Poems received the 2013 Noma Award for the Translation of Japanese Literature. He has been awarded the Order of the Rising Sun and the Order of Australia.

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JAY RUBIN (b. 1941) is professor emeritus of Japanese literature at Harvard University. One of the principal translators of Haruki Murakami, he translated The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Norwegian Wood, After Dark, 1Q84 (co-translated with Philip Gabriel), After the Quake: Stories, and Absolutely on Music: Conversations with Seiji Ozawa. Among his many other translations are Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and The Miner and Sanshirō by Sōseki Natsume. He is the author of Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words and the editor of The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories. His translations into English of Seikō Itō’s modern Japanese translations of Noh plays appear in every issue of MONKEY.

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MARIKO SAITŌ (b. 1960) translates Korean literature into Japanese and is widely acknowledged as an advocate for contemporary Korean fiction. Among the numerous authors she has translated are Han Kang, Jeong Yi-hyeon, Hwang Jungeun, Chung Serang, and Cho Nam-joo. Saitō has also published books on Korean literature and history. In 2015 she was the recipient of the first Best Translation Award for Park Min-gyu’s Castella, which she co-translated with Hyun Je-hoon.

MOTOYUKI SHIBATA (b. 1954) translates American literature and runs the Japanese literary journal MONKEY. He has translated Paul Auster, Rebecca Brown, Stuart Dybek, Steve Erickson, Brian Evenson, Laird Hunt, Kelly Link, Steven Millhauser, and Richard Powers, among others. His translation of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was a bestseller in Japan in 2018. More recent translations include Eric McCormack’s Cloud and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. He is professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo.

JORDAN A.Y. SMITH (b. 1976) is an associate professor at Josai International University, where he teaches literary translation, Japanese culture, and comparative literature. He has translated poetry by Gōzō Yoshimasu (published in Alice Iris Red Horse, New Directions, 2016), Noriko Mizuta (The Road Home, 2015; Sea of Blue Algae, 2016), Tahi Saihate, and other contemporary poets in Japan. He is editor-in-chief of Tokyo Poetry Journal and co-creator of The New Japanese Poetry, a BBC Radio 4 series. As a poet, he has co-authored two volumes and published one collection, Syzygy (Awai Books, 2020). His translation of Hideo Furukawa’s “Counterfeiting García Márquez” appears in vol. 1 of MONKEY, and an excerpt from City of Ears in vol. 2.

STEPHEN SNYDER (b. 1957) teaches Japanese literature at Middlebury College. He is the author of Fictions of Desire: Narrative Form in the Novels of Nagai Kafū (University of Hawai’i Press) and his translations include The Housekeeper and the Professor, Hotel Iris, and The Diving Pool: Three Novellas by Yōko Ogawa (Picador), Out by Natsuo Kirino (Vintage), and Coin Locker Babies by Ryū Murakami (Kodansha).

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LEO ELIZABETH TAKADA (b. 1991) is a translator and self-translating poet born in Japan, raised in Scotland, and currently living in Tokyo. Takada is the English translator of the screenplay and subtitles for the award-winning feature film Perfect Days, and the Japanese translator of the interview series with the film’s director, Wim Wenders. Takada’s bilingual poetry collections include Sapere Romantika and Kyoto Remains. Their translation of “A Phone Call from Emily Dickinson” appears in MONKEY, vol. 5.

GINNY TAPLEY TAKEMORI (b. 1962) has translated fiction by more than a dozen early modern and contemporary Japanese writers. Her translations of Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman (2018) and Earthlings (2020) were published to great acclaim. Her translation of Kyōko Nakajima’s Naoki Prize–winning The Little House was published in 2019. With Ian MacDonald, she translated Nakajima’s Things Remembered and Things Forgotten (2021). Together with translators Lucy North and Allison Markin Powell, she is one of the cofounders of the collective Strong Women, Soft Power, which promotes Japanese women writers and their translators.

LAUREL TAYLOR (b. 1989) is a translator, poet, and assistant professor of Japanese at the University of Denver, where she researches and teaches contemporary Japanese literature, gender and sexuality, and translation. Her translations include fiction and poetry by Yaeko Batchelor, Minae Mizumura, Aoko Matsuda, and Noriko Mizuta. She is the co-translator (with Hitomi Yoshio) of Mieko Kawakami's forthcoming Sisters in Yellow (Knopf). Her translations of stories by Kaori Fujino appear in vols. 3–5 of MONKEY, as well as on the MONKEY website under “Translators to watch for.”

ROYALL TYLER (b. 1936), now long retired to a rural property in New South Wales, taught Japanese language and literature in the U.S., Canada, Norway, and Australia. Among his translations are Japanese Tales (1987), Japanese Nō Dramas (1990), The Tale of Genji (2001), and The Tale of the Heike (2012). He has received the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize, the Japan Foundation Award, the MLA-Roth Translation Award, the NSW Premier’s Translation Prize, and the Order of the Rising Sun.

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HANAE NISHIDA VUICHARD (b. 1978) earned her master’s degree at the University of Tokyo with a thesis on the fiction of Henry James. She lives in Switzerland, where she works as a freelance translator. Her translations into Japanese include Rana Dasgupta’s Solo, Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses and Paul Theroux’s Ghost Train to the Eastern Star.

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PAUL WARHAM (b. 1973) studied Japanese at Oxford and at Harvard University. His translations include Supermarket by Satoshi Azuchi (Thomas Dunne Books), Plainsong by Kazushi Hosaka (Dalkey Archive Press), and Ground Zero by Yuichi Seirai (Columbia University Press).

Y

ASA YONEDA (b. 198Q) is the translator of The Lonesome Bodybuilder (Soft Skull Press, 2018) by Yukiko Motoya and Idol, Burning (HarperVia/Canongate, 2022) by Rin Usami. With David Boyd, Yoneda is co-editing KANATA, a collection of Japanese fiction chapbooks for Strangers Press. Yoneda’s translation of “The City Bird” by Natsuko Kuroda is featured in MONKEY, vol. 3. Her translations of stories by Midori Osaki, co-translated with David Boyd, appear in vols. 3–5.

HITOMI YOSHIO (b. 1979) is professor of Japanese literature at Waseda University. During 2022–24 she was a visiting scholar at Harvard University. She is the translator of Natsuko Imamura’s This Is Amiko, Do You Copy? (Pushkin Press, 2023) and is the co-translator of Mieko Kawakami’s forthcoming works, Ashes of Spring (Amazon Audible), Sisters in Yellow (Knopf), and Dreams of Love, Etc. (Knopf). Her translation of Midori Osaki’s “Apple Pie Afternoon,” a play, is featured on the MONKEY website under “Translators to watch for.” Her translations of Mieko Kawakami’s work are featured in MONKEY, vols. 1–4; vols. 4 and 5 include her translations of stories by Ichiyō Higuchi.

Z

ANNA ZIELINSKA-ELLIOTT (b. 1963) is the director of the MFA in Literary Translation at Boston University. She is a translator of modern Japanese literature into Polish. Best known for her translations of Haruki Murakami, she has also translated Yukio Mishima, Banana Yoshimoto, and Jun’ichirō Tanizaki. She is the author of a Polish-language monograph on gender in Murakami’s writing, a literary guidebook to Murakami’s Tokyo, and several articles on Murakami and European translation practices relating to contemporary Japanese fiction.