Hitomi Kanehara was born in Tokyo on August 8, 1983. She stopped attending school at the age of eleven. After she left home as a teenager, she sent her stories to her literary translator father by e-mail and he helped her edit them. At the age of 21, she wrote Snakes and Earrings which won the 2004 Akutagawa Prize, a prestigious Japanese literary award. One of the judges, the celebrated writer Ryu Murakami, said her book was ‘easily the top choice, receiving the highest marks of any work since I became a member of the selection panel.’ The Japanese edition of Snakes and Earrings has sold over a million copies, topping all the bestseller lists. Her other books include Ash Baby, Amebic, and her latest work Autofiction.