Leza Lowitz is a multi-genre writer and editor. She has published over 17 books, and has received the PEN Josephine Miles Award in Poetry for Yoga Poems: Lines to Unfold By, a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award, grants from the NEA and NEH, the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Award for the translation of Japanese literature, and the 2014 APALA Award in Youth Literature from the American Librarian’s Association for her debut YA novel, Jet Black and the Ninja Wind (Tuttle Publishing). Her memoir on adapting and adopting in Japan, Here Comes The Sun, was published by Stone Bridge Press in 2015. Essays from Lowitz’s memoir have appeared in the New York Times “Motherlode” column, Yoga Journal, The Huffington Post, Shambhala Sun, and Best Buddhist Writing. Her young adult novel in verse, Up from the Sea, was released by Crown Children’s (Random House) in 2016. Lowitz, a yoga teacher, also runs her own studio in Tokyo, where she lives with her husband and their young son. She attended the Community of Writers in 1999. www.lezalowitz.com