Kazumi Yumoto is a developing writer, with only three novels currently to her credit. She was born in Tokyo in 1959 and still resides there. Her first interest was music, and she studied composition at Tokyo University of Music, testing her writing skills with study texts for operas. After graduation, she wrote radio play endings and film scripts for television.

In her Boston Globe-Horn Book Award speech, she lists two writers who have had an influence on her development, mentioning Stephen King's story "The Dead Body" and Carson McCullers's books about children. She also emphasizes the importance of reading as a way of understanding the world as well as the writer's craft. She spent a fairly normal childhood in Tokyo, but was a lonely child who did not like school and spent much of her time with a little sparrow she had rescued. By the...