Simon Rowe left the green hills of New Zealand for the big sky country of Australia when he was sixteen years old. At twenty-one, he set out for the world and somehow managed to fund his travels by photographing and writing about them. He has lived in Japan for more than twenty-five years, winning numerous awards for his short fiction and screenplays, including Good Night Papa (2013 Asian Short Screenplay Contest) and Pearl City: Stories from Japan and Elsewhere (2021 Best Indie Book Award). His stories about Japanese life and culture have appeared in The Paris Review, the New York Times, TIME (Asia), the South China Morning Post, The Straits Times, The Australian, and the Australian Financial Review. He has a black belt in iaido (sword quick-drawing), a passion for sea kayaking, and an itch for adventure he never seems able to scratch.