Writer and Japanese Translator
Translated Books
Translated Stories
Interviews
ABOUT SAM
Sam Bett is a fiction writer and Japanese translator whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Freeman's and The New York Times. A winner of the Japan–U.S. Friendship Commission Prize, he has translated fiction by Osamu Dazai, Izumi Suzuki, Fuminori Nakamura, Yoko Ogawa, and Yukio Mishima. Working with David Boyd, he cotranslated the Mieko Kawakami novels Heaven, shortlisted for the International Booker Prize; All the Lovers in the Night, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction; and Breasts and Eggs. As the translator of The Night of Baba Yaga by Akira Otani, he was awarded a CWA Dagger for Crime Fiction in Translation. Sam holds an MFA in Fiction from Bennington. In 2025, he received the Commissioner for Cultural Affairs Award from the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs. His first novel is a romantic comedy set during a shark fishing touranment in 1990s Martha’s Vineyard.
Author photo by Danny Gugger