Rachel Thorn (formerly Matt Thorn; born May 12, 1965) is a cultural anthropologist and a faculty member at the Kyoto Seika University's Faculty of Global Culture (in the Japanese Culture Course) in Japan. She is best known in North America for her work dealing with manga (Japanese comics for girls). She has appeared at multiple anime conventions, including Otakon 2004. She chose to translate manga into English after reading The Heart of Thomas by Moto Hagio in the mid-1980s. In March 2010, it was announced that Thorn would edit a line of manga co-published by Shogakukan and Fantagraphics.