author portrait
© © Jean-Luc Bertini

Julie Otsuka

JULIE OTSUKA was born and raised in California. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and her first novel, When the Emperor Was Divine won the 2003 Asian American Literary Award and the 2003 American Library Association Alex Award. Her second novel, The Buddha in the Attic, was a finalist for the National Book Award 2011 and won the 2012 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the 2011 Langum Prize in American Historical Fiction. The Buddha in the Attic was an international bestseller and the winner of the prestigious Prix Femina étranger 2012, and the Albatros Literaturpreis 2013. She lives in New York City.

Books

Celebrating Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

In celebration of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in May, Penguin Random House Education is sharing a collection of titles by authors from the community. This list is comprised of memoirs, fiction, and history, and offers a range of topics from disability and trauma to immigration and family, and beyond. The

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WHEN THE EMPEROR WAS DIVINE has been honored with the Phoenix Award

Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor Was Divine has been honored with the 2022 Phoenix Award, which encourages high standards of criticism, scholarship, research, and teaching in children’s literature. The only prize of its kind, the award recognizes a book of exceptional literary merit published twenty years prior that did not win a major award at the time

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