Nahoko Uehashi

Nahoko Uehashi is a Japanese fantasy author who won the Hans Christian Andersen Award for Writing in 2014. She is best known in the English-speaking world for the Moribito series (translated by Cathy Hirano), a sequence of fantasy novels set in a richly imagined Asian-influenced world, following Balsa, a wandering spearwoman, as the bodyguard of the young Prince Chagum. Uehashi trained as a cultural anthropologist, and her fantasy worlds reflect deep research into pre-modern societies and their social structures, religious practices, and ecosystems. The first Moribito book was adapted into an acclaimed anime series in 2007. She is one of Japan's most celebrated authors of children's and young adult fantasy. She was a professor at Kawamura Gakuen Woman's University in Tokyo.