Ruth Ozeki

Ruth Ozeki is a filmmaker and novelist who has won major awards in both fields. Her first novel, My Year of Meats, won the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Award, the Imus/Barnes & Noble American Book Award, and a Special Jury Prize of the WorldCookbook Awards in Versailles. All Over Creation was a New York Times Notable Book and winner of the American Book Award, as well as the 2004 WILLA Literary Award for Contemporary Fiction. Her award-winning novels have been described as "witty, intelligent, and passionate" by the Independent, and as possessing "shrewd and playful humor, luscious sexiness, and kinetic pizzazz" by the Chicago Tribune. She began her media career as an art director in film, switched to directing television documentaries, and then began making her own films, of which Body of Correspondence won the New Visions Award at the San Francisco Film Festival. A frequent speaker on college and university campuses, she serves on the advisory editorial board of the Asian American Literary Review.