Naoko Higashi is a multi-award-winning Japanese poet, novelist, children’s writer and screenwriter. She is best known for her work in the Japanese tanka poetry form. Her fictional work includes The House in the Forest of Threads, which won the thirty-first Tsubota Joji Literature Award and was subsequently made into a television drama. The Soul-Catchers was made into a film in 2024. Her most recent work is The Flannel’s Thread. Meet her on Instagram: @Higashinaokoh. Lucy North is a British translator of Japanese fiction and non-fiction. Her translations include Toddler Hunting and Other Stories by Taeko Kono, The Woman in the Purple Skirt by Natsuko Imamura, and Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi. Her work has appeared in Granta, Words Without Borders and The Southern Review, and in several anthologies including The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature and Found in Translation: 100 of the Finest Short Stories Ever Translated.

If you want a calm, simple read, this is the book for you…each short tale is a lesson in connection and is both straightforward, sad and life-affirming.

Naoko Higashi is a multi-award-winning Japanese poet, novelist, children’s writer and screenwriter. She is best known for her work in the Japanese tanka poetry form. Her fictional work includes The House in the Forest of Threads, which won the thirty-first Tsubota Joji Literature Award and was subsequently made into a television drama. The Soul-Catchers was made into a film in 2024. Her most recent work is The Flannel’s Thread. Meet her on Instagram: @Higashinaokoh. Lucy North is a British translator of Japanese fiction and non-fiction. Her translations include Toddler Hunting and Other Stories by Taeko Kono, The Woman in the Purple Skirt by Natsuko Imamura, and Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi. Her work has appeared in Granta, Words Without Borders and The Southern Review, and in several anthologies including The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature and Found in Translation: 100 of the Finest Short Stories Ever Translated.

If you want a calm, simple read, this is the book for you…each short tale is a lesson in connection and is both straightforward, sad and life-affirming.