Michelle Zauner

Michelle Zauner was born in Seoul to a Korean mother and an American father. The family moved to Eugene, Oregon, when she was a baby, and she spent many summers with relatives in Seoul. She studied at Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia and played in local bands, among them the emo band Little Big League.

In 2014 her mother got cancer, and Zauner went home to Eugene to care for her. Her mother died that October. Zauner's solo project, Japanese Breakfast, turned to that grief on its first albums. Its third album, Jubilee (2021), was nominated for a Grammy. In 2018 The New Yorker published her essay "Crying in H Mart".

Crying in H Mart (2021) expands that essay into a memoir. It tells of her bond with her mother, which often ran through Korean food, and of her mother's illness and death. After the loss, Zauner cooks Korean dishes and shops at the Korean grocery chain H Mart to hold on to her heritage. The book spent 60 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list.

In 2024 she spent a year in Seoul to study Korean, and she is writing a second memoir about that year.