Ryuichiro Utsumi was born in Nagoya in 1937 and grew up in Ichinoseki, Iwate. His debut novel, Setsudo nite, won the Bungakukai Prize for New Writers in 1969. He has been nominated for the Akutagawa Prize and the Naoki Prize. He currently lives in Niiza, Saitama. English translations of his stories have appeared in Alimentum, The Dirty Goat, and Metamorphoses, among others.