in 2002. After the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, Yu began to travel frequently to the affected areas, and, from March 16, 2012, she hosted a weekly radio show called "Yu Miri no Futari to Hitori" (柳美里の二人と一人, "Yu Miri's Two People and One Person") on a temporary emergency broadcasting station called Minamisōma Hibari FM, based in Minamisōma, Fukushima. Her 2014 novel Tokyo Ueno Station reflects her engagement with historical memory and margins by incorporating themes of a migrant laborer from northeastern Japan and his work on Olympic construction sites in Tokyo, as well as the March 11, 2011 disaster. In November 2020, Tokyo Ueno Station won the National Book Award for Translated Literature for a translation by translator Morgan Giles. In 2021, she was working on a novel about migrant workers titled Yonomori Station after Yonomori Station on the Jōban Line. Personal life Yu has experienced racist backlash to her work because of her ethnic background, with some events at bookstores being canceled due to bomb threats. In 1999, she became pregnant with a married man and took refuge with a former lover suffering from cancer. He took care of her during her pregnancy and died shortly after her child was born in 2000. These events form the basis of her memoir Inochi. Since April 2015, Yu has lived in Minamisōma, Fukushima. In 2018, she opened a bookstore called Full House and a theatre space called LaMaMa ODAKA at her home in Odaka District. On 2020, she was baptized at the Haramachi Catholic Church in Minamisōma and was given the name Teresa Benedicta, the religious name of Edith Stein. She is a single mother and has one son. Published in English Gold Rush, Welcome Rain. (2002). . Translated by Stephen Snyder. "Specimens of Families" in Zainichi Literature: Japanese Writings by Ethnic Koreans edited by John Lie. (2018). . Translated by Abbie (Miyabi) Yamamoto. Tokyo Ueno Station, Tilted Axis. (2019). . Translated by Morgan Giles. The End of August, Riverhead Books. (Forthcoming August 2023). ISBN 0593542668. Translated by Morgan Giles. References External links La Valse de Miri Miri Yu's official Web site Miri Yu's unofficial blog Miri Yu's photoblog and diary Miri Yu's other language works list Miri Yu at J'Lit Books from Japan Synopsis of Gold Rush at JLPP (Japanese Literature Publishing Project) 1968 births Living people Japanese-language writers People from Tsuchiura People from Yokohama South Korean dramatists and playwrights