Bio

Hi there! My name is, you guessed it, Julia Byers. Some friends call me Jules or Julie. Some of my family calls me J-Bird. Honestly, I’ll respond to basically anything that begins with a J.

long story short

I’m a full-time graduate student at the University of Southern California – School of Cinematic Arts, where I’m pursuing my MFA in Film & Television Production with focuses on sound and writing/directing. Previously, I worked in kid-lit publishing in NYC. I am a graduate of the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, where I earned my BA in Creative Writing & Literature with Highest Honors, along with a minor in Global Media Studies (Screen Arts & Cultures). Additionally, I’ve earned certificates from the Summer School in English Literature at St Peter’s College, Oxford University and the Columbia Publishing Course UK. I spend my free time writing, watching too much TV, and staring longingly at other people’s dogs.

short story long

I grew up in metro-Detroit, where I spent my childhood annoying the billion and one pets my parents loved me too much to say no to, doing theatre and film stuff, and, of course, writing. I wrote SO MUCH as a kid. To the point that some of my best friends were kids I’d met online through Scholastic’s old teen writer forums, Write It. By the time I was graduating high school, it seemed we had been friends for far too long without ever actually getting to meet in person, so we convinced our parents to let us all spend a weekend together in Chicago, under the guise of founding a young writers’ conference.

I’m still confused how we pulled this off, but it HAPPENED, and we had so much fun, I ended up founding nonprofit Chapter One Events, which for a decade ran events online and off for tween, teen, and twenty-something writers, including the Chapter One Young Writers Conference (ages 12-20) and Chapter Twenty-One Conference (ages 21-29).

In the midst of planning conferences (and writing away), I earned my BA with Highest Honors in Creative Writing & Literature and a minor in Global Media Studies (Screen Arts & Cultures) from the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor. Between 2012 and 2016, I was honored to receive the Detroit News Best & Brightest scholarship in Language Arts, First Place in the Children’s/YA Lit category of the Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition, a Hopwood Underclassmen Fiction Award, the Arthur Miller Award, and Highest Honors for my creative writing honors thesis. Additional honors have included being named a multi-time James B. Angell Scholar for earning straight As and winning a Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Student Achievement Award, among other awards and recognitions.

Because I clearly hate sleep, I spent my college years also interning around the publishing industry; studying literature and climate change abroad as part of the Summer School in English Literature at St Peter’s College, Oxford University (housed at Magdalen College); working as the assistant manager and publicist for Dawn Treader Book Shop; writing film and event reviews for Arts at Michigan; volunteering at various film festivals and other campus events; and taking an active role in multiple student organizations, including co-chairing the university’s Publishing Career Forum and taking a student theatre troupe abroad to produce and act in a play at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland.

The Fringe took place the summer after I graduated and, since I was already abroad, I figured why not stay longer–so I headed back down to Oxford to attend the inaugural Columbia Publishing Course UK, organized by Columbia University and housed at Exeter College, Oxford University. Afterward, I headed back stateside to move to NYC, where I interned in the editorial department at Scholastic for six months, mostly working with chapter books and YA novels. (Highlights included getting to work on some of the Goosebumps books by RL Stine and spending an afternoon coming up with puns for the end pages and marketing materials of Goldy Moldavsky’s excellent YA satire No Good Deed.)

Eventually, I landed at iconic children’s literary agency Sheldon Fogelman Agency, where I worked for just under four and a half years, doing everything from assisting the literary agents, to co-agenting a book myself (ila Nguyen-Hayama’s incredible upcoming debut graphic novel with Abrams, The Benten School of Esoterics!), to managing the foreign rights deals for the agency’s backlist titles. Along the way, friends kept asking me to take author photos and headshots for them, so I ended up also starting my own photography business, Julia Byers Photography. Additionally, in my free time for several years I tutored kids in creative writing and English.

In the midst of all of this, however, I began really missing the big, complicated, and incredibly creative and energizing collaborative projects I’d worked on growing up, from school plays to indie films. So, ultimately, I realized that although I love books, working on the business side of publishing full-time wasn’t the best fit for me personally. In September 2022, I left my job at SFA in order to spend a few months focusing on my writing and photography, and in January 2023 I moved to Los Angeles to pursue my MFA in Film & Television Production at the University of Southern California – School of Cinematic Arts.

I now spend my time sound designing student films, learning about directing, and writing as many projects as SCA will let me. An incredible honor in fall 2024 was getting to write the 546 capstone film “The Things I Leave Behind,” as well as sound designing, writing, and acting in the 546 capstone film “Dear Mr. Hitman.” Additionally, I now freelance edit books part-time through Reedsy.

When I’m not losing sleep over homework or freelance editing, you can probably find me losing sleep over hanging out with friends, watching an unhealthy amount of film and television, keeping active, taking care of my billion and one houseplants–or, of course, writing. I write so much as a twenty-something creative.

And yeah. Here’s to the adventures to come.

site photos (c) Christine Woeller Photography, Avery Byers, and Julia Byers Photography