Mieko Kawakami started her career as a singer songwriter. Her first novella My Ego, My Teeth, and the World, published in 2007, was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize, the most prestigious literary prize in Japan, and was awarded the Tsubouchi Shoyo Prize for Young Emerging Writers. Her second novella Breasts and Eggs won the Akutagawa Prize and sold 250,000 copies. Kawakami's first full-length novel, Heaven, won the Ministry of Education's Fine Arts Award for Debut Work, as well as the Murasaki Shikibu Prize. Her collection of short stories Dreams of Love, Etc won the Tanizaki Jun'ichiro Prize, and her collection of prose poems "Sentan de sasuwa sasareruwa soraeewa" (2006) was awarded the Nakahara Chuya Prize, one of the most prestigious prizes for Japanese poetry.