Julie Otsuka

Julie Otsuka is a Japanese-American author who draws on her own family history for her novels. Her first, When the Emperor Was Divine, is set in the World War II internment camps and is based on her grandfather, who was arrested as a suspected spy the day after Pearl Harbor. She followed it with The Buddha in the Attic, about Japanese women who came to the United States as picture brides, and The Swimmers, which draws on her mother's frontotemporal dementia.