Akira Otani (王谷 晶, Ōtani Akira; born 1981) is a Japanese fiction writer born in Tokyo. Known for a sharp, economical style,[1] her work often subverts genres like mystery and noir and focuses on characters that exist outside the gender archetypes of Japanese fiction, which she has described as "stiff and lacking reality."[2] Her novel Baba Yaga no yoru (The Night of Baba Yaga), a yakuza thriller concerned with sisterhood, has been compared to Thelma and Louise[3] and was shortlisted for the Mystery Writers of Japan Award. Otani is lesbian.[4] In December 2021, Big Comic Spirits published a short manga entitled "Sakana ni natta Satsun no hanashi," for which Otani wrote the text and artist Ayumu Hida did the drawings.