Michelle Zauner

Michelle Chongmi Zauner (born March 29, 1989) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and author, known as the lead vocalist of the indie pop band Japanese Breakfast. Her 2021 memoir, Crying in H Mart, spent 60 weeks on The New York Times hardcover non-fiction bestseller list. In 2022, Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world under the category Innovators on their annual list.

Zauner was raised in Eugene, Oregon, and began playing music and hosting public performances when she was 15. In 2011, after graduating from Bryn Mawr College, Zauner and three other musicians formed Little Big League, a Philadelphia-based emo band that released two albums, These Are Good People (2013) and Tropical Jinx (2014). Zauner, who in 2013 began to release music under the name Japanese Breakfast, left Little Big League in 2014 when she returned to Eugene to care for her ailing mother. In 2016, she released Japanese Breakfast's debut album, Psychopomp, which centered on grief and her mother's death. A followup album, Soft Sounds from Another Planet, was released in 2017. A third, Jubilee, was released in 2021 and became the band's first album to chart on the Billboard 200, peaking at No. 56; it was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album. The band's fourth album, For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) was released in 2025, peaking at No. 46 on the Billboard 200. As Japanese Breakfast, Zauner also wrote the soundtrack for the 2021 video game Sable.

Zauner's essays have been published in Glamour, The New Yorker, and Harper's Bazaar. She released her first book, Crying in H Mart: A Memoir, via Alfred A. Knopf in 2021 to commercial success and critical acclaim. She has directed most of Japanese Breakfast's music videos; she has also directed videos for American singer Jay Som and power pop band Charly Bliss.

Michelle Chongmi Zauner was born on March 29, 1989, in Seoul, South Korea, to Chongmi, a housewife, and Joel Zauner, a car salesman. Her mother was Korean and her father is American of Jewish heritage. In the memoir, she writes "Growing up in America with a Caucasian father and Korean mother, I relied on my mom for access to our Korean heritage."

Zauner was raised in Eugene, Oregon, where the family moved when she was nine months old.

Growing up, Zauner and her mother visited their family in Seoul most summers.

At fifteen, Zauner asked her mother to buy a guitar. She began taking weekly guitar lessons at The Lesson Factory, learning chords, and writing songs. Her first songs were about "friendships and their fallouts." She began playing at local open mic nights and at performance venues around Eugene under the name Little Girl, Big Spoon, much to the chagrin of her mother, who hoped that her daughter would not pursue a career in music. She began advertising her music around Eugene and frequently played at the W.O.W. Hall as an opening act for singers such as Mike Coykendall, M. Ward, and Maria Taylor. Zauner also played at school benefits. Her musical activities strained her relationship with her mother, which caused Zauner to become depressed during senior year at South Eugene High School.

Zauner attended Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, where she created an independent major in creative production and became fond of authors such as Philip Roth, Richard Ford, and John Updike. She preferred to write fiction to avoid writing about her mixed-race identity as a Korean-American, believing that if she did, she would be playing the "race card". In the fall of 2008, Zauner joined fellow Bryn Mawr students Marisa Helgeson, Casey Sowa, and Riki Gifford-Ferguson to form Post Post, an indie pop band that rehearsed in Helgeson's dorm. Post Post released an EP, Meta Meta, on September 4, 2009, through the label Awkwardcore Records. Zauner also played in a band called Birthday Girlz, through which she wrote the song "Everybody Wants To Love You." She graduated from Bryn Mawr in 2011, then waited tables and worked at Philadelphia music venue Union Transfer's coat check while trying to get her music career off the ground.