Thermae Romae, Vol. 1
Mari Yamazaki was born in Tokyo on April 20, 1967. At age seventeen, she moved to Italy, where she started studying drawing at an art school in Florence. Yamazaki made her manga debut in 1996 with an autobiographical look at her life in Italy. After bouncing around between Japan, the Middle East, and Italy, she finally settled down in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2003. In 2008, she began drawing Thermae Romae for the monthly magazine Comic Beam on an irregular basis, and the first collected volume was a smash hit upon its 2009 release. In 2010, Thermae Romae received the Manga Taisho Award 2010 and the 14th Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize, Short Story Award.Mari Yamazaki currently lives in Chicago with her Italian husband and their son.