村田 喜代子（kiyoko murata）- 小説家

村田 喜代子（むらた きよこ、1945年–）は、日本の小説家。福岡県八幡市（現・北九州市）生まれ。1985年に個人誌『発表』を創刊し、1987年に「鍋の中」で芥川賞を受賞した。同作では、夏をともに過ごす子どもたちと老女の交流を通じて、生と死に触れる体験を描く。『ゆうじょこう』では、明治期の熊本の遊郭に売られた少女が読み書きを学び、女たちの過酷な境遇や抵抗を知っていく姿を描き、2014年に読売文学賞を受賞。日本海の離島に二人きりで暮らす老女たちを主人公とした『飛族』では、老いとともにある日々の営みを幻想を交えて描き、2019年に谷崎潤一郎賞を受賞した。女性たちの暮らしや身体、土地に刻まれた記憶を題材に、現実と幻想が交わる物語を紡いでいる。

Kiyoko Murata (born 1945) is a Japanese novelist from Yahata, now part of Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture. She launched the independent literary magazine Happyo in 1985 and won the Akutagawa Prize in 1987 for Nabe no Naka, which explores encounters with life and death through the relationship between children and an elderly woman during a summer together. A Woman of Pleasure, translated into English by Juliet Winters Carpenter, follows a girl sold to a brothel in Meiji-era Kumamoto. As she learns to read and write, she comes to understand the hardships faced by the women around her and their resistance to exploitation. The book won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature in 2014. Hizoku, which received the Tanizaki Prize in 2019, blends everyday life with fantasy in its portrayal of two elderly women living alone on a remote island in the Sea of Japan. Murata’s fiction explores women’s lives, aging, and memories rooted in particular places.