Julie Otsuka!

                              Julie Otsuka

·         Born and raised in California

·         Studied as an undergraduate at Yale University

·         Pursued painting before starting to write fiction at age 30

·         Her first novel was “When the Emperor was Divine”

·         This book was based on her own family history

·         “ her grandfather was arrested by the FBI as a suspected spy for Japan the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, and her mother, uncle and grandmother spent three years in an internment camp in Topaz, Utah.”

·         This book sold more than 250,000 copies

·         “The Buddha in the Attic” was her second book, written in 2011

·         “is about a group of young Japanese 'picture brides' who sailed to America in the early 1900s to become the wives of men they had never met and knew only by their photographs.”

·         “Otsuka's fiction has been published in Granta and Harper's and read aloud on PRI's "Selected Shorts" and BBC Radio 4's "Book at Bedtime." She lives in New York City, where she writes every afternoon in her neighborhood cafe.”(litlovers)

·         Links- http://www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/13-fiction/8573-buddha-in-attic-otsuka?start=1