[3] At the age of 18 Nakazawa wrote Umi o kanjiru toki (海を感じる時, When I Sense the Sea), a sexually explicit story about a high school girl whose unrequited love for a male classmate leads to conflict with her mother.
[2] Nakazawa followed Umi o kanjiru toki with the novel Onna tomodachi (女ともだち, Female Friends) and the short story collection Nobudō o tsumu (野ぶどうを摘む, Picking a Wild Grape).
[2] In subsequent years Nakazawa wrote several more books, including the 1999 novel Mamebatake no hiru (豆畑の昼, Midday in the Peanut Field), about childhood sweethearts who have a love affair despite being involved with other people, and the 2000 novel Gakutai no usagi (楽隊のうさぎ, Band Rabbits), a story about junior high school students in a brass band.
[12] Umi o kanjiru toki held its international premiere at the 2015 Rotterdam Film Festival under the English title Undulant Fever.
[14] In 2015 she published the nonfiction book Anti-Hate / Dialogue (アンチヘイト・ダイアローグ), a series of conversations with professionals from different fields about the rise of hate speech.