Mockett was born to a
Japanese mother and an American father and grew up speaking
English,
German and Japanese. Her mother's family owns a
Buddhist temple in
Tōhoku Japan, 25 miles from the
Fukushima Daichi nuclear power reactor. Her father's family owns a
wheat farm in
Nebraska. Mockett graduated from the
Robert Louis Stevenson School in
Pebble Beach, California and
Columbia University in 1992. Her debut novel,
Picking Bones from Ash, was published in 2009 and shortlisted for the Paterson Prize. An
op-ed published in
The New York Times about the effects of the
2011 Great East Japan Earthquake in Japan ultimately led to the publication of Mockett's memoir,
Where the Dead Pause and the Japanese Say Goodbye, which was shortlisted for the
PEN Open Book Award and the Northern California Book Award. It was also a
Barnes & Noble Discover Pick.
American Harvest, her third book, follows her travels through the
American heartland in the company of
evangelical harvesters and examines the
rural and
urban divide. This book won the 2020 Northern California Book Award for General Nonfiction. Calling on her own biracial, bicultural identity, Mockett strove to see the "other" in a divided America. In 2022, she was awarded a
Fulbright Scholarship to live and conduct research at
Waseda University in Tokyo. Her most recent book, a novel titled
The Tree Doctor, was published by Graywolf Press in 2024 to critical acclaim. This contemporary post-pandemic novel was a most-anticipated book according to
The Washington Post and Oprah and features a coming of middle age heroine who reinvents herself, through an affair with a mysterious arborist, against the backdrop of the Japanese classic
The Tale of Genji. Mockett's essays have appeared in
Elle,
The New York Times, and
Salon. She has taught at
Saint Mary's College MFA and the Rainier Writing Workshop and is currently on the faculty of the Bennington Writing Seminars. With Kiese Laymon, she is also a series editor of the new nonfiction imprint, Great Circle Books, published by
University of North Carolina Press. == Works ==