Katherine M. Lawrence

Katherine M. Lawrence is the author of the Sword of the Taka Samurai, literary historical fiction action adventures about Yamabuki, a woman samurai who lived in 12th-century Heian Japan during the years running up and through the Genpei War. These books are published by Toot Sweet Ink.

Inspired by several decades studying in martial arts halls led by women — as a martial arts in-residence student for four years at the Ja Shin Do Academy in Boston, Massachusetts, and Santa Fe, New Mexico; the San Jose State University Kendo Club; and Pai Lum White Lotus Fist-Crane style in Albany, New York — Katherine set out to write about the experiences of women who train in warriors’ skills. Studying marital arts from the Korean, Japanese, and Chinese traditions helped prepare Katherine to write about Yamabuki’s journeys through these lands.

During her undergraduate and masters degree work under the late Jon Bridgman and the late Imre Boba, Katherine developed an appreciation for the different mindsets of people in other eras and cultures; the assumptions of 21st-century Americans are very different from late 19th century Europeans, let alone peoples of other cultures in bygone eras. As H.P. Hartley writes, “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”

Katherine has a Bachelor’s Degree in Chemistry and History from the University of Washington, an MA in History ABT, and an MBA from Harvard University. For years, she worked in corporate America, working for companies such as DuPont, Hewlett-Packard, and the Japanese company Kaneka.

According to The Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2015, Katherine M. Lawrence may very well have originated the widely used term “glass ceiling.”

When she finds free time, Katherine pursues cooking authentic cajun food, studying advanced mathematics, trying to beat the computer at chess, and eating all the sushi she can find.

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