LIKES
Irish butter; capers (the activities, not the food)
DISLIKES
Heat & humidity; parades
NEUTRAL
Concerts; capers (the food, not the activities)
Photo by my brother-in-law, the illustrious BJ Thompson
Julia Drake’s debut novel The Last True Poets of the Sea was published in 2019 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers and received the 2020 New England Book Award, six starred reviews, and was named a 2019 Best Book of the Year by Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist, among other publications. Her short fiction has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Esopus, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and her second young adult novel is forthcoming from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers in 2025. She holds an MFA from Columbia University, and occasionally moonlights as a professor of creative and academic writing. She lives and works in Philadelphia with her partner, their rescue rabbit Ned, and their rescue puppy Sal.
Other Things I Wrote
Julia, age unknown
THE BOY FROM JURASSIC PARK’S COLLEGE APPLICATION ESSAY
McSweeny’s Internet Tendency - November 2014
“Claws scrabbled at the door, each scratch a shock of fear to my heart. Inside the kitchen, my sister and I hid behind a stainless steel table, slick as the sweat that dripped from my brow. A creak of the door handle; a clicking of prehistoric toenails across the tile floor; and I looked at my sister, panic searing through me: the raptors had made it inside.”
Ned, age unknown
NOTES FOR A YOUNG ALCHEMIST
Esopus 24 (Spring 2017)
“In lab, you develop headaches from sneaking glances at others’ solutions. Everyone else’s looks better, shinier. Master Salcedo tells you over and over that in order to succeed you must love the process and not the result, but mother of God, the process is so boring: melting and waiting and chopping and adding and waiting, distillation one, remelting and rewaiting, sneaking a glance, hating Tesla, distillation two, your face full of acne, your stomach growling. The routine just makes you sad and bored, and how can you enjoy that? This is the process they tell you to love: everything you think has the potential to be brilliant congeals in an ugly way, stuck to the bottom of a flask like lard.”