Naoki Higashida was born in Kimitsu, Japan in 1992. Diagnosed with non-verbal autism as a child, he learnt how to communicate using an alphabet grid and when he was thirteen wrote The Reason I Jump. Published in Japan in 2007, its English translation in 2013 was widely acclaimed and became a No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller as well as a New York Times bestseller. It has since been published in over thirty languages. The film based on the book, directed by Jerry Rothwell and produced by Jeremy Dear, Stevie Lee and Al Morrow, had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020, when it won the Audience Award for World Cinema Documentary. It went on to win awards at the Vancouver, Denver and Valladolid International Film Festivals before its international release in 2021. Higashida's sequel to the book, Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight, about living with autism from his perspective as a young adult, was published in Japan in 2015. An English-language edition, including new material and a short story Higashida wrote especially for it, was published in 2017 and was in turn a Sunday Times bestseller. He has also written children's books, poems and essays. David Mitchell's novels include Cloud Atlas, The Bone Clocks and, most recently, Utopia Avenue. KA Yoshida was born in Yamaguchi, Japan, and specialised in English Poetry at Notre Dame Seishin University.
