Ruth Ozeki is a Japanese-American novelist, filmmaker, and Buddhist priest. She is best known for her novels My Year of Meats, All Over Creation, and A Tale for the Time Being, which won the 2013 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize. Ozeki has also written and directed several films, including Halving the Bones and The Face of Jizo. Ozeki was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and raised in both the United States and Japan. She studied English literature at Smith College and received her MFA in film from Temple University. She has taught at Yale University, Wesleyan University, and the University of Colorado. In addition to her writing and filmmaking, Ozeki is an ordained Zen Buddhist priest. She is the abbot of the Brooklyn Zen Center and the author of the book, The Heart of the Buddha: Entering the Tibetan Buddhist Path. Ozeki is a passionate advocate for social justice and environmental protection. She is a board member of the International Forum on Globalization and a member of the Climate Reality Project. She is also a founding member of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists.