Kazuki Sakuraba is a Japanese author of novels and light novels, born on July 26, 1971, in Shimane Prefecture, though she grew up in Yonago, Tottori Prefecture. Her interest in writing began at a very young age, as she started composing novels while in elementary school after befriending a girl who was writing something similar. During her junior and senior high school years, she often skipped classes to read books, and she later graduated from Yonago Higashi High School before moving to Tokyo for university.

Sakuraba's professional writing career began in the 1990s. She won the DENiM New Writer's Award in 1993, and in 1999, her novel Yozora ni, Manten no Hoshi, later retitled Loneliness Guardian AD2015 Isolated Town, received an honorable mention in the 1st Famitsu Entertainment Award in the novel category, which led to her debut. Following her debut, she experienced a period of stagnation where her work did not sell well, but this changed with her first major breakthrough in 2003.

Sakuraba is best known as the creator of the mystery light novel series Gosick, which was first published in December 2003 with illustrations by Hinata Takeda. The series is set in a fictional European country in 1924 and follows Kazuya Kujo, a Japanese exchange student, who meets Victorique de Blois, a brilliant but reclusive girl who spends her days in the library solving difficult mysteries. The original Gosick light novel series ran for nine volumes, concluding in July 2011, with additional side story volumes titled GosickS and a sequel series named Gosick New Continent released from 2013 to 2016. The series was adapted into an eight-volume manga illustrated by Sakuya Amano, serialized from January 2008 to May 2012, as well as a 24-episode anime television series produced by the studio Bones, which aired from January to July 2011.

Beyond Gosick, Sakuraba is the original creator behind the anime film Fusé: Memoirs of a Huntress, which was released in 2012 and is based on her novel Fuse Gansaku Satomi Hakkenden, published in 2010. Her other notable works from the 2000s include the highly acclaimed novels Suitei Shōjo and A Lollypop or A Bullet from 2004, as well as Shōjo ni wa Mukanai Shokugyō from 2005, which was her first work aimed at the general public rather than the light novel demographic.

While Sakuraba built her reputation with light novels, she has also achieved significant success in mainstream literary fiction. In 2007, she won the 60th Mystery Writers of Japan Award in the long and serial short story category for her novel Red Girls, also known as Red Girls The Legend of the Akakuchibas. The same year, this work was nominated for the 28th Eiji Yoshikawa Literary Newcomer Award and for the prestigious Naoki Prize. The following year, in 2008, she won the 138th Naoki Prize for her novel Watashi no Otoko, which was later adapted into a film that won the Golden George at the Moscow International Film Festival in 2014. This ability to achieve critical success in both the light novel format and general literature makes her a distinctive figure in the Japanese publishing industry. Her work is characterized by a range across genres including mystery, historical fiction, and crime fiction, with recurring explorations of complex human relationships and psychological depth.