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 won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2013 for The Thing About Luck.

Cynthia Kadohata is known for her insightful coming-of-age stories about Asian American women. Her first published short story appeared in The New Yorker in 1986. As she spent her early childhood in the American South, the author set both her first adult novel and her first novel for children in Southern states. The former became a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and the latter—her first children's book, entitled Kira-Kira—won the 2005 Newbery Medal.