Sonoko Machida is a best-selling and award-winning Japanese author, born in 1980 in Fukuoka Prefecture. Her masterpiece,
52-Hertz Whales, won the 2021 Japan Booksellers' Award and became a best-seller with about half a million copies sold in Japan. Her two following novels,
Scooping Up the Stars and
Sora's Recipes, were both nominated for the award in consecutive years.
Bruno Navasky is known for his translation of
How Do You Live by Genzaburo Yoshino, the book that was the inspiration for
The Boy and the Heron, the major new Studio Ghibli film.