Noriko Mizuta’s free-verse poetry has blended transnational feminist perspectives with meditations on the meaning of family and home through five decades. Mizuta joined the Boomerang Society poetry circle when she was an undergraduate in Japan. She then continued writing in the U.S., publishing End of Spring (1976) and Interlude (1980), and co-authored Amber in Flames (1996) with Ohba Minako, while living in Riverside, California. Mizuta returned to Japan in 1985, and published her major critical works of modern Japanese women writers. She has established together with Chinese poets the Japan-China Association for Short Poetry. Mizuta has also translated works by Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and E. Anne Kaplan into Japanese. In 2009, she founded the poetry journal Carillon Street. Recent collections have included The Road Home (2008); the three-part Summer Holidays in Santa Barbara (2010), A Wedding in Amsterdam (2013), Sabbath in Tokyo (2015); and Sea of Blue Algae (2013), which explores themes of the life-cycle, humans’ origins and destinations, and the acceptance of mourning. Mizuta received the Cikada Prize (2013), founded to commemorate Swedish poet and Nobel laureate, Harry Martinson.
水田宗子，著名詩人和女性學批評家。水田宗子在東京女子大學文理學部畢業後，赴美耶魯大學留學並取得美國文學博士學位。先後在美國多所大學任教，1985年為創建城西短期大學回國，1992年創立城西國際大學。著有詩集《歸路》、《聖塔芭芭拉的暑假》、《綠藻之海》等。評論集有《從女主人公到英雄——女性的自我與表現》、《20世紀的女性表現——朝向性差異的外部》、《語言紡織羽衣——女性的行旅物語》、《現代主義思潮與「戰後女性詩歌」的發展》、《大庭美奈子的記憶文學》以及英文專著《埃德加・愛倫・坡的世界——罪與夢》、《近代日本文學中的現實與虛構》等。水田宗子翻譯有多部童話集和女性批評專著。她曾獲得瑞典駐東京大使館主辦的馬丁松國際詩歌獎也被匈牙利政府授予共和國文化勳章，並獲世界數十所大學頒授名譽博士和名譽教授，現為日本城西大學理事長。