Hiromu Arakawa

[excerpted from Beyond the Single Story blog]
Hiromu Arakawa, or Hiromi Arakawa, is a female manga artist that had written many series and standalone manga. She is best known for writing Fullmetal Alchemist, a shounen manga series that is well known worldwide and has been adapted into an anime twice.

Arakawa was born on May 8, 1973 in Makubetsu, Hokkaido and was raised on a dairy farm with three elder sisters and a younger brother. In her childhood, Arakawa expressed her interest in being a manga artist and would move to Tokyo in the year 1999 to work in the manga industry. When she published her first authentic manga piece, Stray Dog, Arakawa had used her now famous pen name “Hiromu Arakawa” instead of her real name Hiromi Arakawa. The reason why Arakawa had chosen a male pseudonym is because she intends to write shounen genre manga, which are high stake action series that are mainly intended for adolescent boys. Women in the manga industry were usually expected to write shojo manga, a more female intended manga that is less action and more emotion.

Within the next two decades, Arakawa would make many other manga pieces that are mostly within the shounen genre but is now currently writing her continuing series called Silver Spoon, a manga about a young man learning about the intricacies of the agricultural industry. Outside of her job as a manga artist, Arakawa is currently still living in Tokyo with her husband and their three children.