Polly Barton

Polly Barton is an award-winning translator based in the UK. Her translations include Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki (Pushkin Press, 2017), Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda (Tilted Axis / Soft Skull Press, 2020), There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura (Bloomsbury, 2021), and So We Look to the Sky by Misumi Kubo (Arcade, 2021). 

After being awarded the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize, in 2021 she published Fifty Sounds, her reflections on the Japanese language. Her translations of stories by Aoko Matsuda, Tomoka Shibasaki, and Kikuko Tsumura appear in MONKEY New Writing from Japan.