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.

[2] Tanabe is a first-generation American who grew up in Washington, D.C., with foreign parents.

[2] Her father Kunio Francis Tanabe is from Yokohama[3] and is the former Book World art director and senior editor at The Washington Post.

[4] Tanabe holds American and Belgian passports and speaks French and English.

[5] Tanabe graduated from Vassar College and currently lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, daughter, and son.