Mieko Kawakami: Sisters in Yellow

Award-winning novelist, Mieko Kawakami, has made a name for herself highlighting the voices of women in Japan and dispelling with the cliches that have permeated fiction about the country for over a century.

Her unique voice is built on life experience that is unconventional to her literary contemporaries. She grew up in a working-class family in Osaka, and when a career as a singer/songwriter didn't pan out, her big break came through her immensely popular blogs on her candid experiences of life as a woman, love, loneliness and gendered expectations in Japan. What started as an online phenomenon has evolved into an internationally acclaimed body of work, translated into over twenty languages. Kawakami’s prose is renowned for taking the everyday and imbuing it with poetry and intrigue.

For one night only, join Kawakami for an evening of conversation with presenter Michaela Kalowski. They’ll discuss the latest book, Sisters in Yellow, a novel heavily based on Kawakami’s early years in sunakku, neighbourhood bars run by women.