Kadohata, Cynthia, 1956-

Cynthia Kadohata was born in Chicago, moved to Georgia with her family as a small child, and then moved again, to Arkansas, where she lived until she was nearly 9. She currently lives in Southern California. Her father was the son of Japanese immigrants who came to the United States in the 1920s. Her mother’s family were Californians who moved to Hawaii, but her mother eventually moved to Chicago. Cynthia Kadohata has a journalism degree from the
University of Southern California. She enjoys traveling and feels she gets much of her “writing energy” from seeing the country.

Cynthia Kadohata (born July 2, 1956)[1] is a Japanese American children's writer best known for her young adult novel Kira-Kira which won the Newbery Medal in 2005.[2] She won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2013 for The Thing About Luck.[3] Kadohata was born in Chicago, Illinois.[1] Her first published short story appeared in The New Yorker in 1986. She received a BA in journalism from the University of Southern California in 1979.[4] She also attended graduate programs at the University of Pittsburgh and Columbia University.