Karin Tanabe is a historical fiction novelist who is best known for her works The Gilded Years: A Novel, a novel about the first African-American graduate of Vassar College, and The Diplomat's Daughter: A Novel, a love story set in a Japanese American internment camp. National Public Radio has described her as a "master of historical fiction".
Tanabe is a first-generation American who grew up in Washington, D.C., with foreign parents. Her father Kunio Francis Tanabe is from Yokohama and is the former Book World art director and senior editor at The Washington Post. Tanabe holds American and Belgian passports and speaks French and English.
Tanabe graduated from Vassar College and currently lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, daughter, and son. Until 2017, she was a reporter at Politico.