About

While I have been writing for the better part of the last ten years, I have always struggled with the idea of calling myself a writer. I am, however, finally comfortable enough to do it. Hi, my name is Julia and I am a writer.

I was a double major in Theatre Arts and Creative Writing at Bard College at Simon’s Rock and I did a semester and a summer at the National Theater Institute in the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. Throughout my education at Simon’s Rock, I learned about fiction, poetry and short formats, I also found my voice as a writer and a theatermaker. Nevertheless, it was not until my semester at the O’Neill that I put those voices together to become a playwright. During my time at the O’Neill we explored different genres through weekly prompts (from American realism to brechtian style, including musicals and film noir). I have just finished an MA in Writing for the Stage and the Screen at University College Dublin, during this time I realized that while I love playwrighting, it is not the only writing voice I want to explore. It has been through this exploration that I have fallen in love with expressing myself through language.

Language is the one rhythm that makes sense to me. When I listen to a song, I listen to it solely for the lyrics. I do not understand timbre or beat or the difference between melody and harmony. What I do understand is the rhythm of language, how words fit together and how some words have a different effect than others (e.g. swamp is a funnier word than river). Furthermore, playwriting and screenwriting are the forms that use rhythm the most (alongside poetry), because it is not read, it is spoken and shared. Because of this, they do not allow the writer to hide behind beautiful descriptions or fancy language, they are storytelling at its rawest and they live and die with the voice.

There’s nothing new under the sun and no story is a new story and everything that could possibly be created already exists. If this is not the most terrifying thing anyone has ever heard, I don’t know what is. Someone said this to me back in 2015 and I simply accepted it; eight years, a global pandemic and a few identity crises later I have decided to accept it again but in a very different way. Maybe no story I can tell will change the world, but writing a story will definitely change the way I exist in the world.