Born in Chiba Prefecture, Japan, her family emigrated to Canada in 1969, settling in British Columbia. She studied at the University of Calgary and now lives in Burnaby, British Columbia.

Goto's first novel, Chorus of Mushrooms, won a 1995 Commonwealth Writers Prize and was co-winner of the 1996 Canada-Japan Book Award. Her novel The Kappa Child won the Tiptree Award for gender-bending science fiction.