Cynthia Kadohata was born in 1956 in Evanston, Illinois, the daughter of Japanese American parents. She has a journalism degree from the University of Southern California and attended graduate writing programs at Columbia University and the University of Pittsburgh. Kadohata believes her writing has been shaped by her family's experience as Japanese Americans, which included frequent moves across the United States in search of work. Kadohata drew on her family's experience for Kira-Kira, her novel for young readers which received the 2004 Newbery Medal.

Kadohata was hailed as a new voice in American fiction in 1989, with the publication of her first book, The Floating World. Like Kira-Kira, this book also features a young girl's first-person narration of her family's moves throughout the United States. The Floating World was widely reviewed and praised for its masterful writing. Kadohata also published In the Heart of the Valley of Love (1992), set...