Cynthia Kadohata is a Japanese American children's writer best known for her young adult novel Kira-Kira, which won the Newbery Medal in 2005. She also won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2013 for her book The Thing About Luck.

Kadohata is renowned for her insightful coming-of-age stories about Asian American women. Her first published short story appeared in The New Yorker in 1986. Having spent her early childhood in the American South, she set both her first adult novel and her first children's novel in Southern states. Her first children's book, Kira-Kira, became a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.