Kenji Nakagami (1946-92) was a prolific novelist and short story writer who was admired as much for his prose style as his depictions of the burakumin. He received the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for "The Cape" in 1976.
Eve Zimmerman is Assistant Professor of Japanese literature at Wellesley College and received the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for Translation in 1992.