Julia Fierro is the author of the novels The Gypsy Moth Summer and Cutting Teeth.
Her work has been published in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Buzzfeed, Glamour, The Millions, Flavorwire, Lenny Letter, and other publications, and she has been profiled in Brooklyn Magazine, the L Magazine, The Observer and The Economist.
A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, she founded The Sackett Street Writers’ Workshopin 2002, which has grown into a creative home to 5,000 writers in NYC, Los Angeles, and Online. SSWW was named “Best Writing Classes” by The Village Voice, Time Out New York, and “Best MFA-Alternative” by Poets & Writers, Brooklyn Magazine and the L Magazine.
Julia lives in Brooklyn and Santa Monica with writer Justin Feinstein and their two children. She travels country-wide to give talks on the craft of writing, the business publishing, and on building creative communities.
My story
The first story of my life is my parents’ story, which has always fascinated me.
My parents met at a 1967 dance in the Bronx sponsored by the NYC Catholic Diocese. My father, a recent immigrant from Italy, spoke no English. My mother, an Irish-American 2nd grade teacher, spoke no Italian. “We spoke the language of love,” my mother says. In 1969, my mother joined my father when he returned to Italy.
I spent the first two years of my life in our cozy villa in Turin, Italy, surrounded by tree-lined boulevards and stately art nouveau cafes and a view of the snow-capped Alpine arch. My father, who had spent fifteen years in the Caribinieri, the national military police of Italy, worked as a security guard in Turin for Fiat. My mother was the principal of an International elementary school.
We moved to Long Island when I was two years old. My father filtered his struggle to adjust to life in a new country through his still life oil paintings, which came to line the walls of our home. Witnessing his transition inspired me, and the “American Dream” would become a central story in my life as a reader (no surprise that The Great Gatsby was one of my first favorite books) and, later, as a novelist.
My mother was my first, and best, storyteller, and when I was old enough to tell my own stories, often acted out by my Barbie dolls, my mother was my first captive audience.
Each weekend, my father drove my brother and I to the public library where we borrowed armfuls of books. These weekly trips were the beginning of my love for reading.
Growing up on the North Shore of Long Island, the Sound a short walk from our front door, inspired my love for the salty air of the sea. Our backyard was the lush and overgrown Caumsett State Park, and my brother and I spent hours in the woods each day acting out stories of adventure in which we were always the heroes.
I would miss the sea when I left Long Island for college in Washington, DC at American University. It was at American that my love for books would become a way of life.
Literature was both my haven and my gift. I threw myself into reading–Dostoyevsky, Edith Wharton, Fitzgerald–and, with a newfound confidence, began to write short stories.
In Washington, D.C., at the end of my senior year, I met the love of my life, my husband Justin, a musician studying drums at the Berklee College of Music. We’ve been together ever since.
In 2000, while living in Boston, where my husband was studying percussion at Berklee College of Music, I opened a letter from the University of Iowa. To my shock (I even called the program to make sure there wasn’t a mistake), I was accepted into the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.
For two years, I lived and breathed the craft of fiction writing, working with Marilynne Robinson, Francine Prose, Lan Samantha Chang, Ethan Canin, Frank Conroy and Chris Offutt. I am so grateful for my time at Iowa, where I had the honor of teaching fiction-writing as a Teaching-Writing Fellow, and where I gave myself permission to take my writing seriously.
After graduating from Iowa in 2002, my husband and I moved to Brooklyn where I taught literature and creative writing at Hofstra University. A few months later I put the first ad on Craigslist for a writing workshop in my home on Sackett Street. What started as eight writers meeting around my kitchen table has now, over 11 years later, become The Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop, a creative home to over 3,500 writers.
In between teaching, writing, and developing The Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop, I gave birth to two children, both people-lovers and book-lovers.
They keep me on my toes, provide endless inspiration (and material), and have a fondness for Raggedy dolls ever since the cover of their mama’s book was released.
I teach the Post-MFA Workshop and Advanced Novel-Writing Workshop at Sackett Street, and edit novel manuscripts for select students. Manuscripts I’ve edited include novels and story collections published by Riverhead Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Harper Collins, and other presses.
I’m proud to work and live in the vibrant literary communities of Brooklyn and Los Angeles. When I’m not writing or teaching or parenting or directing Sackett Street and hopping from coast to coast, I’m working in my garden, or knitting shawls and baby blankets while listening to audiobooks.
One of my favorite knitting patterns: silk fan shawl
My Brooklyn backyard in summer bloom