Machida, Sonoko: Our Friends at the Convenience Store by the Sea

Sonoko Machida is an award-winning Japanese author, born in 1980 in Fukuoka Prefecture. In 2016, she won the Onna ni yoru onna no tame no R-18 bungakusho (By Women for Women R-18 Literature Prize) for Kamerun no aoi sakana (Blue Fish of Cameroon). Her masterpiece 52 herutsu no kujira-tachi (The 52-Hertz Whales), won the 2021 Japanese Booksellers' Award and became a bestseller with about half a million copies sold in Japan. Her two following novels, Hoshi wo sukuu (Scooping Up the Stars) and Sora gohan (Sora's Recipes), were both nominated for the award in consecutive years.