Michiko Kakutani
Michiko Kakutani (ミチコ・カクタニ, 角谷 美智子, born January 9, 1955) is an American writer and retired literary critic, best known for reviewing books for The New York Times from 1983 to 2017. In that role, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1998.
Michiko Kakutani
January 9, 1955
Michi
- Critic
- author
- journalist
- The Washington Post (c. 1976–1977)
- Time (1977–1979)
- The New York Times (1979–2017)
- Shizuo Kakutani (father)
- Keiko Uchida (mother)
Yoshiko Uchida (aunt)
Pulitzer Prize for Criticism (1998)
Early life and family[edit]
Kakutani, a Japanese American, was born on January 9, 1955, in New Haven, Connecticut. She is the only child of Yale mathematician Shizuo Kakutani and Keiko "Kay" Uchida. Her father was born in Japan, and her mother was a second-generation Japanese-American who was raised in Berkeley, California.[1][2] Kakutani's aunt, Yoshiko Uchida, was an author of children's books.[1] Kakutani received her bachelor's degree in English literature from Yale University in 1976, where she studied under author and Yale writing professor John Hersey, among others.[3]
Personal life[edit]
Kakutani is a fan of the New York Yankees.[21][22] As of 2018, she lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.[23]
During her career at The New York Times, Kakutani developed a reputation as an extremely private person who was seldom seen in public, with articles describing her as "mysterious" and "reclusive".[24][25][26] Shawn McCreesh, writing in New York magazine, said that "you were likelier to have seen a snow leopard in Manhattan than to meet Kakutani in the wild".[23] However, upon the publication of The Death of Truth, Kakutani began giving interviews to print outlets, though she declined to appear on television.[23]