Julie is the award-winning author of the novels In Another Life (Sourcebooks, 2016) and The Crows of Beara (Ashland Creek Press, 2017). Her short stories and essays have appeared in several journals, including Emerge Literary Journal; Mud Season Review; Cirque: A Literary Journal of the North Pacific Rim; Cobalt; River Poets Journal, in the print anthologies Stories for Sendai; Up, Do: Flash Fiction by Women Writers; and Three Minus One: Stories of Love and Loss; and featured on the flash fiction podcast No Extra Words. She holds undergraduate degrees in French and Psychology and a Master’s in International Affairs. Julie leads writing workshops and seminars and offers story/developmental editing and writer coaching services. A hiker, yogini, and wine geek, Julie makes her home on the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington state. 

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. Returning to this place of peace and beauty came after thirty years of adventures elsewhere, including high school and college in central Washington, study and teaching abroad in France, Japan, and Chad, 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 Port Townsend in 2013. Here, I finished my first novel, completed two more, and am at work on the fourth. 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.

In Another Life (Sourcebooks, 2016), was inspired by the Cathar Crusade and is set in present day and 13th century France. 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, 2017), 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.

I’ve completed a third novel that’s resting in revisions: Upside-Down Girl, which follows the journey of Holly Dawes as she emigrates from Seattle to New Zealand, where she befriends a young Maori girl and realizes there is more than one way to fulfill her desire to be a mother, and more than one way to lose a beloved child.

My current novel-in-progress is the first in a contemporary crime fiction series set in a seaport Olympic Peninsula town, featuring Liz Tempel — a disgraced former Seattle Vice detective who can’t set aside her desire for truth, justice, and small batch bourbon. Good For Vanishing is my working title.