Maki Shimizu attended Shōyō High School Toride in Japan until 1999 and graduated with majors in art, painting and printmaking. At the University of Tsukuba, she studied liberal arts until 2003 and earned a Bachelor of Arts in design and creation. Since 2006, she has been living in Berlin as a freelance artist and illustrator. As part of the Museum für Kommunikation Berlin's Summer of Comics 2019, Shimizu was presented with the "large comics scholarship" from the state of Berlin. The publication of her graphic novel "Über Leben" earned her TV short portraits on Arte and in Kulturzeit on 3sat in 2021, as well as radio features on Deutschlandfunk Kultur Kompressor, Radio Eins Literaturagenten, on WDR 3, Deutschlandfunk Corso and rbbKultur.