Ian MacDonald received a Ph.D. in Japanese literature from Stanford University, where he minored in Japanese art history. He spent five years living in Japan and has worked as a freelance translator for ten years. He has also taught translation theory and served as a curatorial assistant in Asian Art at Stanford. MacDonald has translated stories by Mishima Yukio, Kurahashi Yumiko, and Izumi Kyōka, among others, and was awarded first prize in the Shizuoka International Translation Competition in 1997. He is currently working on a second translation of stories set in the Edo period by Kitahara Aiko for the Japanese Literature Publishing Project.