Juliet Winters Carpenter was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1948. She is a veteran translator and double recipient of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission for the Translation of Japanese Literature, in 1980 for Abe Kōbō’s Secret Rendezvous and in 2014 for Minae Mizumura’s A True Novel. A professor emerita of Doshisha Women’s College, she lives with her husband on Whidbey Island in Washington State.