Local Author Event: Rebecca Copeland
Join us for an evening with local author Rebecca Copeland, as she reads from and discusses her book, The Kimono Tattoo. This free, in-person event will take place in the UCPL auditorium.
The Kimono Tattoo takes readers on a journey into Kyoto’s intricate world of kimono design, and into a mystery that interweaves family dynamics, loss, and reconciliation. The novel follows translator Ruth Bennett as she returns to her childhood home in Kyoto to translate a novel by a long-forgotten Japanese writer, but she soon finds herself attempting to find the killer of a woman covered in tattoos of kimono motifs. Using her intimate knowledge of both kimono and Kyoto, Ruth must confront a vicious killer along with her own painful family secrets.
A University City resident, Copeland was born in Japan to missionary parents before moving to North Carolina, where she spent glorious childhood days listening to her older sisters relay their stories about Japan. As a junior in college, Copeland had the opportunity to spend a year in Japan, where she studied traditional dance, learned to wear a kimono, and traveled, making ridiculous mistakes in the Japanese language. Afterwards she earned a PhD in Japanese literature at Columbia University. She is now a professor of Japanese literature at Washington University in St. Louis.
Copies of The Kimono Tattoo will be available for purchase from Subterranean Books. For more information, call 314-727-3150 or email reference@ucitylibrary.org.
