Kogawa's published first as a poet, beginning in 1968 with "The Splintered Moon". She began to work as a staff writer for the Office of the Prime Minister in Ottawa in 1973. In 1981 she published her first prose work: "Obasan", a semi-autobiographical novel that has become her best-known work. "Books in Canada" awarded the book its First Novel Award for it in 1981, and in 1982 Kogawa won the Book of the Year Award from the Canadian Authors Association and an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Kogawa adapted the book for children as "Naomi's Road" in 1985.