Misumi Kubo

is a Japanese writer. She has won the R-18 Literary Award, the Yamamoto Shūgorō Prize, the Yamada Fūtarō Prize, and the Naoki Prize. Her work has been adapted for film and television, including the 2012 film The Cowards Who Looked to the Sky.

Early life and education Kubo was born in 1965 in Inagi, a city in western Tokyo. She attended Catholic schools through junior high and high school, then dropped out of junior college and worked part-time jobs before landing full-time work at an advertising company. After the birth of her child she became a freelance nonfiction writer and editor focusing particularly on women's health and medicine. The next year Fugainai boku wa sora o mita won the 24th Yamamoto Shūgorō Prize. It was later adapted into the 2012 Yuki Tanada film The Cowards Who Looked to the Sky, starring Tomoko Tabata and Kento Nagayama.

Kubo's second book, , a story about three people who travel to see a stranded whale, was published by Shinchosha in 2012. Seiten no mayoikujira won the 3rd Yamada Futarō Prize, which is awarded by Kadokawa Shoten to works in the same artistic spirit as those of mystery writer Futaro Yamada. the 2015 novel , which dramatized an actual case of murder of a young girl by a teenage boy, the 2016 speculative fiction novel , which imagined Japan in 2030 after rising youth suicide rates and declining fertility, and the 2017 novel .

An English version of Kubo's early short story "Mikumari", translated by Polly Barton, was published in 2017 by Strangers Press. The next year Kubo's novel , a story about relationships among nursing caregivers, was published by Gentosha. Jitto te o miru was nominated for the 159th Naoki Prize and led the voting among selection committee members in the first round, but the prize was awarded to Rio Shimamoto. The following year her story was nominated for the 161st Naoki Prize. A Nippon TV adaptation of Yameru toki mo sukoyaka naru toki mo, starring Taisuke Fujigaya of the boy band Kis-My-Ft2, aired in early 2020. In 2022, Kubo was awarded the 167th Naoki Prize for her short story collection .

Recognition 2009: 8th R-18 Literary Prize 2011: 24th Yamamoto Shūgorō Prize 2012: 3rd Yamada Fūtarō Prize 2022: 167th Naoki Prize

Selected works In Japanese , Shinchosha, 2010, (includes "Mikumari") , Shinchosha, 2012, , Shinchosha, 2014, , Bungeishunjū, 2015, , Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 2016, , Shueisha, 2017, , Gentosha, 2018, , Bungeishunjū, 2022,

In English "From the Left Bank of the Flu" (, 2015), translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton, Granta, 2017 Mikumari, trans. Polly Barton, Strangers Press, 2017, So We Look to the Sky, trans. Polly Barton, Arcade Publishing, 2021