Shunmyo Masuno, the head priest of a 450-year-old Zen Buddhist temple in Japan, is the author of the international bestsellers Don't Worry and The Art of Simple Living as well as an award-winning Zen garden designer for clients around the world. He is a professor of environmental design at one of Japan's leading art schools and has lectured widely, including at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Cornell University, and Brown University.

Allison Markin Powell (translator) won the PEN Translation Prize for her translation of Hiromi Kawakami’s The Ten Loves of Nishino and was a finalist for the Man Asian Literary Prize for her translation of Kawakami's The Briefcase. She has also translated Shunmyo Masuno’s The Art of Simple Living and Don't Worry, and works by Osamu Dazai, Fuminori Nakamura, and Kanako Nishi, among others. She was the guest editor of the first Japan issue of Words Without Borders and maintains the online database Japanese Literature in English. She lives in New York.