About Julia Park Tracey
A seasoned and award-winning journalist, Julia is a second-generation magazine- and book-publisher. As a freelance reporter, Julia covered everything from politics to book reviews: Colin Powell and Joe Lieberman, Grumpy Cat and Roxane Gay, lemonade stands and school carnivals. In 2001 she was the founding editor of the Alameda Sun, developing the weekly publication into an award-winning community resource; as publisher, she was one of fewer than 100 women publishers in the Golden State in 2008-10.
An exacting editrix, Julia managed the book publishing imprints of Stellar Media Group, ushering fiction, poetry and regional history books to bookstore shelves. She conceived the East Bay literary festival Alameda Literati in 2003, and won a San Francisco Foundation Grant to support the event over three years. She has helmed glossy city magazines and music, literary, and regional alt-news tabloids.
She has frequently edited book manuscripts and mentored women writers toward publication (see Testimonials). As managing editrix of online site Survivor Lit in 2021, Julia brought positive attention to survivors of sexual assault and helped give voice to untold stories. She has received commendations from her elected representatives, from business and professional women’s groups, from press clubs and the California Newspaper Publishers Association for her community and publishing efforts.
Julia has led social media audits and training to the book trade, including the Northern California Independent Booksellers’ Association and to the Women’s National Book Association. She has been social media manager for multiple book launches and publications.
An accomplished writer, Julia was named Poet Laureate to the city of Alameda, CA, for three years (2014-2017). She holds a BA in journalism and MA in English with a focus on British Literature of the Early 20th Century/Women’s Domestic Fiction in the Interwar Era. She has written scholarly articles on Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and the Harry Potter phenomenon.
Her publications include three novels (lit fic Tongues of Angels and two Veronika Layne mysteries, one of them a number one Amazon bestseller); two award-winning women’s history biographies, I’ve Got Some Lovin’ to Do: Diaries of a Roaring Twenties Teen and Reaching for the Moon: More Diaries of a Roaring Twenties Teen; and Amaryllis: Collected Poems. Her essays have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post, Salon, Paste, Redbook, Scary Mommy and Thrillist. Her poems have been published most recently in Hecate, Sugared Water, Autumn House Review, California Quarterly, Sledgehammer Lit, and Yellow Chair Review.
Julia is a lifelong Northern Californian, living around the Bay Area from birth and raising five children in the East Bay. She lives with her husband, cats, dog, and bees in a fully restored Victorian at the edge of historic Grass Valley, California. She loves hot summers, occasional snow days, Jane Austen, women’s history, and the library.