Julie Berry:Mormon Author
Julie Berry is an American author who writes for children and young adults. She is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Berry, the youngest of seven children, grew up on a 50-acre farm in Western New York. Although all of her older siblings attended Brigham Young University, she traveled her own way and earned a BS degree in communication at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. She met her husband, Phil, there. After she raised her four sons, she earned an MFA in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College of the Fine Arts.
Soon after her fourth son was born, she took a challenge from a friend and started writing humorous essays about life with children. She soon posted them on a website and started thinking about publishing her writing and sold her columns to a Metrowest Daily News.
The Amaranth Enchantment(2009) was her fist published book, written while she finished her master’s degree. Splurch Academy for Disruptive Boys, a series about boys, soon followed, with her sister Sally Faye Gardner as the illustrator (The Rat Brain Fiasco, Curse of the Bizarro Beetle, The Colossal Fossil Freakout, The Trouble with Squids).
Berry wrote another stand-alone novel for children, Secondhand Charm, in 2010. She published her first YA novel, All the Truth That’s in Me, in 2013. Upon its release, it garnered several awards, including the 2013 Horn Book Fanfare title, School Library Journal Best of 2013 book, and a Kirkus Best Teen Read for 2013, named a Junior Library Guild Selection, nominated for a Carnegie Medal and a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults award.
The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place, for middle-grade readers, will be published in September 2014.
