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.^[1] National Public Radio has described her as a "master of historical fiction".^[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. Until 2017, she was a reporter at Politico.^[6][7]

• The List: A Novel (2013) – a novel about a young reporter inspired by Tanabe's experiences at Politico
• The Price of Inheritance: A Novel (2014) – a drama set in the high-end antique furniture world
• The Gilded Years: A Novel (2016) – a historical fiction novel about the first African-American graduate of Vassar College
• The Diplomat's Daughter (2017) – a love story set in a Japanese American internment camp
• A Hundred Suns: A Novel (2020) – a thriller set in 1930s French Indochina
• A Woman of Intelligence (2021) – Cold War spy novel
• The Sunset Crowd (2023) – a story of a glamorous female grifter in 1970s Hollywood