Momoko Kuroda (b. 1938 in Tochigi Prefecture) is one of the most highly-respected haiku poets in Japan today. She has published five collections of haiku, and authored or co-authored another 22 prose works including essays, season- word compendiums, books on haiku for beginners, and a two-volume set of interviews with notable Showa-era poets. Her first haiku collection earned her the Modern Haiku Women award and the Haiku Association New Poet award. In 2011 she was awarded the Dakotsu prize, Japan's most prestigious haiku award. She is a haiku selector for the Nihon Keizai Shimbun's weekly Sunday haiku column, and a frequent haiku selector for NHK television. She is on the jury of several national and regional haiku contests, including the annual Mainichi Shimbun haiku award. In 1990, she founded her own haiku organization, AOI, with a nationwide membership of several thousand. All this she accomplished while working full-time at Hakuhodo, a Tokyo-based advertising firm, until her retirement at age 60.Abigail Friedman, a retired diplomat and accomplished, award-winning haiku poet, began composing haiku in a haiku group that met at the foot of Mt. Fuji, led by Japanese haiku master Momoko Kuroda. Her book, The Haiku Apprentice: Memoirs of Writing Poetry in Japan (Stone Bridge Press, 2006), captures that experience and her insights into haiku. She is founder of HaikuQuebec, the first French/English bilingual haiku group in Quebec City. Her work has appeared in poetry publications in the U.S., Canada, France, and Japan, including: Frogpond; AOI; The Asahi Weekly; Association Francophone de Haiku (AFH); The Moss at Tokeiji (Deep North Press, 2010); ; and Bilboquet. She has presented her haiku at the Montreal Zen Poetry Festival, the Festival international de la poesie de Trois-Rivieres, Haiku Canada, and Haiku North America. In 2012, she was commissioned to compose a haiku to mark the U.S. gift of dogwoods to Japan, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of ...