Hanya Yanagihara (b. 1974) is an American novelist and editor whose work examines the intersection of civilisation, morality, and cruelty. Born in Los Angeles to Hawaiian parents of Japanese descent, she writes with the eye of an anthropologist and the heart of a moral witness.

Her prose is lush yet surgical — she builds entire worlds only to expose their rot from within. Across her novels, Yanagihara interrogates what happens when intimacy, discovery, and power collide: how empathy becomes exploitation, and how progress often conceals the oldest forms of violence.

She does not offer catharsis. Her work demands endurance — a slow, gorgeous descent into discomfort.