Julie Shigekuni is the author of three novels: A Bridge Between Us (Anchor/Doubleday 1995), Invisible Gardens (St. Martin's Press 2003), and Unending Nora (Red Hen Press 2008). Her fiction has been translated into German, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian. Shigekuni was a finalist for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award and the recipient of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature. She has received a Henfield Award and an American Japanese Literary Award for her writing.
Shigekuni received her B.A. from CUNY Hunter College and her M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. She is currently at work on a novella and short story collection entitled Beep on Me, and a 60-minute video documentary, Manju Mammas & the An-Pan Brigade, for which she has received funding from the California Council for the Humanities and the Skirball Foundation and sponsorship from Visual Communications, an all Asian media network. She is development director of the Asian American Studies program being launched at the University of New Mexico.