"Hiromu Arakawa : The Alchemist (Creator)"
Hiromu was born on May 8th, 1973 in Hokkaido (Japan) with an A blood type. She has stated she was risen at a farm in the country, which probably inspired her cow avatar as well as her "equivalent exchange" theory for her manga Fullmetal Alchemist.Her first work was a one-shot called STRAY DOG, which won the first prize in the 21st Century "Shounen Gangan" 9th Awards. In August 1999, this same work debuted in Gangan.
Her next works were Totsugeki Tonari no Enikkusu and Shanghai Youma Kikai (The Shanghai ghost mistery), both of them one-shots and published in Gangan during the year 2000.
Then, in 2001 (in the August issue of Gangan), the first chapter of Hagane no Renkinjutsushi (Fullmetal Alchemist) was published, becoming her first serialised manga and her greatest hit to date. In 2004, Arakawa-sensei received an award in the Shogakukan Manga Awards (Shounen Section) for it.
Fullmetal Alchemist is still being published, 4 years and 50 chapters after its first appearance, in Monthly Shounen Gangan. It's been compiled in 11 tankoubons (plus some side-stories published in other books, such as Perfect Guides or DX). From 2003 to 2004, the series was loosely adapted into a 51 episodes anime by Studio BONES. On the 23rd July 2005, a movie version titled Hagane no Renkinjutsushi: Shamballa wo Yukumono (Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa) premiered at Japanese theaters, following up the anime storyline (which differs greatly from the manga).
In 2005, in the August edition of Monthly Sunday GX (the latest CLAMP work, Kobato, is published here), she released another one-shot titled RAIDEN-18 as a colaboration for this magazine's 5th anniversary.
source: http://www.roy-mustang.net/arakawa/about_arakawa.html (article).
