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Erika Kobayashi (小林エリカ, Kobayashi Erika) is a Japanese author, esperantist, multi-media installation artist, manga artist. She began publishing her work professionally in 2001 and is still active today, recently working alongside translator Brian Bergstrom.

Personal Life
Erika Kobayashi (小林エリカ, Kobayashi Erika) was born on January 24th 1978 in Tokyo, Japan to Tsukasa Kobayashi and Akane Higashiyama, two high-profile Japanese translators of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. She was raised in Ōizumi (大泉), a small town within the Nerima City Ward (練馬区, Nerima-ku) on the outskirts of Tokyo. In 2020 Kobayashi revealed that she has a child.

Career
In 2001 She received her masters degree from the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies (東京大学・学際情報学府, Tōkyō Daigaku Gakusai Jōhōgakubu). Subsequently, she began publishing her work.

In 2003 Kobayashi was appointed as the Japan Foundation's Banff Center artist in residence, and, in 2006 as the Nomura International Cultural Foundation's artist in residence at EAA in Estonia, and at CMAC in France. In 2010 alongside fellow Japanese esperantists Mina Tabei, Kasane Nogawa, and Hisae Maeda, Kobayashi founded the Tokyo based studio “kvina”, and began producing “LIBRO de KVINA”, a book series in Japanese, English, and Esperanto. In 2023, Kobayashi was selected by AC Japan as lead illustrator for Plan International's "I Didn't Even Know I had a Different Life" (私に違う人生があることすら知らなかった), an advertising campaign lead by the Japanese NGO that advocates for women's education globally.

Kobayashi is also a member of the Japan PEN Club (日本ペンクラブ, Nihon Pen Kurabu), an NGO seeking to promote cultural exchange, freedom of speech, of expression, and of the press.

Solo

 * Trinity, Karuizawa New Art Museum, Nagano (2017).
 * 1F in the Forest of Wild Birds, Yutaka Kikutake Gallery, Tokyo (2019)
 * His Last Bow, Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix, London (2019)

Group

 * The Radiants, Bortolami Gallery, New York (2015)
 * Roppongi Crossing 2016: My Body, Your Voice, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2016)
 * Women Imagining Rooms: About the Diary of Lady Sarashina, Ichihara Lakeside Museum, Chiba (2019)
 * Image Narratives: Literature in Japanese Contemporary Art, The National Art Center, Tokyo (2019)
 * Hirosaki Encounters, Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art, Aomori (2022)