Julie Christine Johnson is an award-winning novelist and short story writer. Her debut, In Another Life (Sourcebooks), a timeslip fantasy inspired by the 13th-century Cathar Crusade, was honored as 2016’s Foreword Indies Book of the Year (Fantasy). Her follow-up, The Crows of Beara (Ashland Creek Press), set against the rugged coastline of southwest Ireland, was recognized as a finalist for The Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature. Currently, Julie is preparing for the April 2027 release of Upside Down Girl (Rootstock Publishing), a contemporary drama set in New Zealand that explores the universal longing for community and belonging.

A former international education administrator and wine buyer who has lived on four continents, Julie blends lyrical storytelling with deep explorations of identity, place, and the natural world. Her fiction follows characters on transformative journeys, searching for belonging across landscapes both inner and wild.

When not writing, Julie hikes the misty forests of the Olympic Peninsula, practices yoga, works as a non-profit finance administrator, and continues to find inspiration in the quiet magic of home.

The rest of my story

I was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest and I live not far from my childhood home on the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington state. I returned to this place of peace and beauty after three decades of adventures elsewhere, including study and teaching abroad in France, and Japan, graduate school in the Midwest, and a career as university study abroad program administrator that took me around the world. In 2006, I moved to New Zealand where I attended culinary school and entered the wine industry. Returning to Seattle in 2008, I worked as a wine buyer before moving to the Olympic Peninsula in 2013. Here I have written four novels and I’m working on my fifth. I craft stories about characters searching for a sense of self and place. I hope to move readers with fiction that navigates the borders of heart and mind.

My first novel, In Another Life (Sourcebooks), set in present day and 13th century France, is a timeslip fantasy inspired by the Cathar Crusade. It was named Book of the Year (Fantasy, Adult Fiction) by FOREWORD Indies at the 2017 American Libraries Association Annual Conference. 

The Crows of Beara (Ashland Creek Press), was a finalist for The Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature, judged by PEN/Faulkner author and Man Booker Award nominee Karen Joy Fowler. It takes place in contemporary Co. Cork, southwest Ireland, and weaves together themes of industry vs. the environment, addiction, creativity, and hill walking.

Forthcoming in April 2027 is Upside Down Girl (Rootstock Publishing), a contemporary drama set in New Zealand. Upside Down Girl considers questions of motherhood, family, community, and the universal longing for somewhere to belong and someone to belong to.

I recently completed my first work of crime fiction, The Deep Coil, set in an Olympic Peninsula seaport town and featuring a disgraced former Seattle Vice Detective with a keen sense of justice and a keen nose for small batch bourbon. I’m now at work on a new historical fantasy (working title Divine Sparks) that might just star Mary Magdalene, Rilke, and benevolent honey bees.