Akira Otani
Akira Otani is a Japanese fiction writer born in Tokyo.
Career
Known for a sharp, economical style, her work often subverts genres like mystery and noir and focuses on characters that exist outside the gender archetypes of Japanese fiction, which she has described as "stiff and lacking reality." Her novel Baba Yaga no yoru, a yakuza thriller concerned with sisterhood, has been compared to Thelma and Louise and was shortlisted for the Mystery Writers of Japan Award. Otani is lesbian. In December 2021, Big Comic Spirits published a short manga entitled "1=The tale of Sattun, who has become a fish," for which Otani wrote the text and artist Ayumu Hida did the drawings.Awards
In 2025, Otani became the first person from Japan to win in the UK-based Dagger Awards for her novel "The Night of Baba Yaga", which won the best translated crime novel category.Selected works
Story collections
- 完璧じゃない、あたしたち with stories by Akira Ōtani stories adapted from Lafcadio Hearn, revised by Akira Ōtani 978-4-86528-240-5. - Boys' love
- 君の六月は凍る（https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000002-I032836742 978-4-02-251908-5 - includes ベイビー、イッツ・お東京さま, a half-self biography
Novels
- Edited by [Office Six : 猛獣使いと王子様 : 金色の笛と緑の炎 .
- あやかしリストランテ : 奇妙な客人のためのアラカルト
- *
- 探偵小説（ミステリー）には向かない探偵
- ババヤガの夜
- *Translated into English:.
Essays
- どうせカラダが目当てでしょ
- ''40歳だけど大人になりたい''