About the Author

Iris Yamashita
Photo by Anthony Mongiello

Iris Yamashita is an Academy Award nominated screenwriter and a 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 a 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 continues to develop for both film and streaming media and has been commissioned to write an audio series for BBC Radio, set to release in 2024. She 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.