SHONO YORIKO

(1956–)

Shono Yoriko (real name Ishikawa Yoriko) was born in Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture and studied in Kyoto. She started writing while at Ritsumeikan University and made her publishing debut with the story “Gokuraku” (Paradise, 1981). She did not publish again until 10 years later, when her short-story collection Nani mo shitenai (Doing Nothing, 1991) won the Noma Prize for Literature for New Writers. Her story “Nihyaku kaiki” (Bicentennial Death Anniversary, 1994) won the Mishima Yukio Prize, and another story, “Taimu surippu kombinaato” (Time Slip Industrial Complex, 1994), won the Akutagawa Ryunosuke Prize, making her the first writer to win the new writers’ “triple crown.”