Emi Watanabe Cohen

Emi Watanabe Cohen was born in Boston and grew up on the South Side of Chicago. The stories she tells are informed by her mixed Japanese/Jewish heritage, as well as by her experiences growing up in a multilingual environment. Her earliest memories contain a hodgepodge mix of English, Japanese, Korean, Hebrew, and Russian, and she spent eleven years studying Mandarin in school. With her love of languages comes a deep appreciation for all the beautiful things that languages can convey.

Emi graduated from Brandeis University in 2021 with a BA in Creative Writing. The Lost Ryū is her debut novel.