Born in Tokyo in 1960, Yoko Tawada moved to Germany in 1982 to study the poetry of Paul Celan. She alternates between writing in Japanese and German and her work has been awarded the most prestigious literary prizes in both countries, including the Akutagawa Prize, the Kleist Prize, the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize, the Tanizaki Prize, and the Goethe Medal. She is the author of stories, poems, plays, essays and novels, including Memoirs of a Polar Bear, for which she won the inaugural Warwick Prize for Women in Translation in 2017.