Iris Yamashita is an Academy Award nominated screenwriter and an Anthony and Barry Award nominated mystery author. Born in Missouri, raised in Hawaii and having lived in Guam, California, and Japan, Iris Yamashita was able to experience a diversity of culture while growing up. She studied engineering at U.C. San Diego and U.C. Berkeley and also spent a year at the University of Tokyo studying virtual reality. Her first love, however, has always been fiction writing, which she pursued as a hobby on the side.
She wrote the script Letters From Iwo Jima for Clint Eastwood. The film received a Golden Globe award for “Best Foreign Language Film” of 2006 and was nominated for 4 Oscars including “Best Picture” and “Best Original Screenplay.”
City Under One Roof was her debut mystery novel set in a tiny Alaskan town where all the residents lives in a single high-rise building. The book has been nominated for an Anthony Award and Barry Award and has made numerous “Best of” lists including “Best Thrillers of 2023” by The Washington Post. Village in the Dark is the follow-up to the Cara Kennedy series and was released in 2024.
Iris wrote a six-part audio series called Purple Heart Warriors for BBC Wold Service, which will be released on December 9, 2024. The series covers the 100th/442nd Regimental Combat Team–a segregated unit comprised of Japanese-Americans who volunteered for service in World War II, despite their families being locked up in incarceration camps in deserts across America. After seeing some of Europe’s most brutal fighting and considered an expendable unit, they have been recognized as the most decorated unit in US military history for their size and length of service.
Iris has also dabbled in writing a musical for a Japanese theme park with Tony Award-winning composer Jeanine Tesori. She has taught screenwriting at the University of California, Los Angeles and the American Film Institute.