“It felt like the world had divided into two different types of people, those who had felt pain and those who had yet to.”
- Name: Michelle Zauner
- Born: March 29, 1989
- From: Seoul, South Korea
- Pronouns: She/Her
- Contribution/Impact: On April 20, 2021, Zauner released her first book Crying in H Mart: A Memoir (based on the 2018 New Yorker essay) via Alfred A. Knopf. The book debuted at number two on The New York Times nonfiction best-seller list for the week ending April 24, 2021.
- Occupation: Musician/Director/Author
- Known For: Japanese Breakfast – Be Sweet, and Japanese Breakfast – Boyish.
- Awards: On 2016, Zauner won the 11th edition of the Glamour magazine essay contest with her essay, “Real Life: Love, Loss, and Kimchi”. On 2019, it was announced that the publishing rights to Michelle Zauner’s memoir were won at auction by Knopf.
- Interesting Facts: Zauner married her bandmate Peter Bradley in 2014, two weeks before the death of her mother. The Japanese Breakfast song “Till Death” was written by Zauner as a love song and a thank-you note to Bradley.
Michelle Chongmi Zauner was born on March 29, 1989 in Seoul, South Korea to Chongmi and Joel Zauner. Her mother is Korean while her father is Jewish-American. Her parents moved to Eugene, Oregon when she was nine months old and she was raised there. The first Japanese Breakfast release was June 2013, the result of a project where Zauner and Rachel Gagliardi recorded and posted one song every day for the month of June.
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