

Writer and Japanese Translator
by Yukio Mishima
Vintage International 2025.01
translated short story "The Dragon Flute"
by Mieko Kawakami
The New Yorker, 2024.08
translated story for summer "Flash Fiction" series
by Izumi Suzuki
Verso Books 2023.04
translated stories “Trial Witch” and “My Guy”
2023 British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Translated Short Fiction, shortlist
by Osamu Dazai
New Directions 2023.03
2024 Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Translation Prize, shortlist
University of Michigan Press 2022.12
Translated story “Worse for Love” by Sakakiyama Tamotsu (Yukio Mishima)
by Mieko Kawakami
Europa Editions 2022.05
cotranslated with David Boyd
2022 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, finalist
2023 Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Translation Prize, shortlist
by Mieko Kawakami
Europa Editions 2021.05
cotranslated with David Boyd
2022 International Booker Prize, shortlist
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 Izumi Suzuki, Osamu Dazai, Yukio Mishima, Yoko Ogawa, Fuminori Nakamura, and Akira Otani. Working with David Boyd, he co-translated 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. Sam holds an MFA in Fiction from Bennington. His first novel is a romantic comedy set during the weekend of a monster shark fishing tournament in early-1990s Martha’s Vineyard.
Author photo © Danny Gugger