Sam Bett is a fiction writer and Japanese translator whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Freeman's and The New York Times. A winner of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize, he has translated fiction by Izumi Suzuki, Osamu Dazai, Yukio Mishima, Yoko Ogawa, Fuminori Nakamura, and Akira Otani. Working with David Boyd, he co-translated the Mieko Kawakami novels Heaven, shortlisted for the International Booker Prize; All the Lovers in the Night, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction; and Breasts and Eggs. Sam holds an MFA in Fiction from Bennington. His first novel is a romantic comedy set during the weekend of a monster shark fishing tournament in early-1990s Martha’s Vineyard.