Julia McKenzie Munemo went to Bard College before earning a master’s in education at Harvard and—many years later—an MFA at Stonecoast.

Her first book, The Book Keeper: A Memoir of Race, Love, and Legacy (Swallow Press, 2020) was called “a carefully crafted memoir for all readers who care about family connections and legacies and about multiracial identity in an increasingly complex world” by Library Journal. You can read an excerpt from The Book Keeper on Public Seminar; listen to Julia talk about the book with Dani Shapiro for the Family Secrets Podcast or discuss her writing process with Ohio University Press; and read an interview with her about The Book Keeper in Solstice Literary Magazine.

Her essays have appeared in Electric Literature, Solstice Literary Magazine, Inside Higher Education, and elsewhere. Her second book, Dreaming in Whitopia: Essays on Race, Mental Health, and Motherhood from a White American Town, is a collection of linked essays that trace her journey as a white mother of young Black men in a small New England town—she hopes to announce its publication very soon.

She directs the Williams College Writing Center and lives in Whitopia.