Biography
Suzanne Kamata (Photo by Tia Haygood)
Suzanne Kamata was born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She is most recently from Lexington, South Carolina, and a proud alumni of Kalamazoo College and the University of South Carolina. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. After college, she came to Japan on the JET Program to help teach English in public schools. She met and married a Japanese high school teacher and baseball coach. Now, having raised twins, she lives in Tokushima Prefecture, Japan, with her husband and two cats. She teaches writing and English Language classes at Naruto University of Education.
Her short stories, essays, articles, poems, and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications including Real Simple, Brain, Child, Cicada, and The Japan Times. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award, an SCBWI Crystal Kite Award, an APALA YA Honor Award, a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and many others.
In her free time, she likes to travel, read (of course!), and watch figure skating.