Julia was born to write. While in high school at Academy of Notre Dame de Namur, she was invited to attend the New English Young Writers Conference at Middlebury College’s famous Bread Loaf Campus, as well as Susquehanna University’s Advanced Writers Workshop. She later won a national gold medal in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards for a short story and was honored at Carnegie Hall. For some, that might suffice; for Julia, though, that was just the beginning of her writing journey.
After graduating from high school with honors (and scoring 5's on all eight of her AP Tests!), she went on to spend her next four years at an Ivy League university. She won writing prizes her sophomore, junior and senior years and crafted two senior theses, each more than 30,000 words. One explored recent translations of Japanese novels into English and the other was a novella. She also worked as the Editor-in-Chief for The Nassau Literary Review, Princeton University’s undergraduate literary magazine. Throughout her time with the magazine, Julia mentored student writers, edited their work, and published bi-annual 70-page magazines. Beyond her writing skills, Julia also graduated from college with honors.
For years she has mentored students in middle school, high school, and college through seminars, workshops, camps, and organizations to help them strengthen and polish their thoughts on paper. She is also the oldest of five children and has helped each of her siblings with various writing assignments, from English class essays to college essays. To date, her work has been included in twenty-five scholarly, creative, and magazine publications. In addition to being a specialist for ES, she is also a reader and webmaster for the literary magazine Chestnut Review. Julia is passionate about the written word, and truly enjoys sharing her passion with her ES students.
BA English, Minors in Humanistic Studies, East Asian Studies, and Creative Writing, PhD in English and Comparative Literature (in progress)