Unlock Your Creative Genius: Julie Berry Reveals Secrets to Writing Success

Who are you?

I’m Julie Berry. I’m a full-time author of books. I also own an independent bookstore which is tremendous fun. Both it and I are based in western New York State in the town where I was born and raised. I returned there during Covid after 30 years away to buy, renovate, and reopen the bookstore as Author’s Note..

What do you write?

I write fiction for young readers, though my YA fiction is often considered crossover and is read by adults as well. I also write middle grade fiction and picture books for younger children. My novels range from historical to fantastical (often both) and humorous (often all three). If Looks Could Kill takes a mythological premise (Medusa is real) and applies a modern twist to it: Medusa-ness is a phenomenon that can strike girls and women, even in modern times, and the idea of her gaze instantly turning men to stone is a misreading of the ancient stories. It situates that premise in a researched historical novel–1888 in London’s East End and then Manhattan’s Lower East Side–in a way that is dark and violent and deathly serious (and romantic) and also, unexpectedly funny.

I loved writing as a teen and attempted to write stories but I could usually see at a glance that they couldn’t stack up to the literature I loved, so I lost heart. But I had some success writing essays — I won some scholarships and biggish prizes as a kid — so that gave me hope enough to major in communication and work on my professional writing skills. I wrote for various employers until a series of life events pushed me in the direction of writing humorous short columns for a newspaper. They were a sort of Erma Bombeck-meets-Dave Barry mashup. Soon I had a regular weekly column in a daily suburban Boston newspaper which ran for a few years. This gave me the confidence to return to graduate school for an MFA in creative writing. I spent a year in Simmons University’s MA/MFA program, then decided that a low-residency program would better suit my schedule as a mom of four young boys, so I transferred to Vermont College of the Fine Arts and completed my MFA there. By the time I had graduated I had secured an agent and…