Mizuki Tsujimura

Mizuki Tsujimura is a Japanese novelist whose work spans multiple genres — mystery, fantasy, romance — and who has become one of Japan's most commercially successful literary authors. Her novel Lonely Castle in the Mirror (Kagami no Kojō, 2017) is perhaps her best known internationally: a beautifully crafted YA fantasy about seven socially isolated children who discover a portal in their mirrors that leads to an enchanted castle, which slowly reveals itself as a space for healing the specific wounds of adolescence.

It won the Japan Booksellers' Award (Honuya Taisho) and in Phillip Gabriel's English translation became an international bestseller. Tsujimura writes with great emotional intelligence about the experiences of young people who feel they don't fit the world they're supposed to inhabit, and her empathy for her characters is palpable throughout.