Bio

Julie Kibler is the author of Home for Erring and Outcast Girls and the bestselling Calling Me Home, which was an IndieNext List pick, Target Club Pick, and Ladies’ Home Journal Book Club Pick, published in fifteen languages. She has a bachelor’s degree in English and journalism and a master’s degree in library science and lives with her family, including four rescued dogs and cats, in Texas.

Julie wrote Home for Erring and Outcast Girls after learning about the historical Berachah Industrial Home in Arlington, Texas. She soon visited the cemetery, the only remaining reminder of the home, and became intrigued by several of the headstones, which led to several years of intense research, writing, and revising, until the novel was ready for readers.

She wrote Calling Me Home after discovering a bit of family lore: As a teen, her paternal grandmother fell in love with a young black man, but their families tore them apart. While digging into the past, she also learned that her father’s hometown had signs at the city limits warning blacks to be gone by sundown.

Julie grew up in various towns in Kentucky, New Mexico, and Colorado, then moved to Texas to attend college and stayed because even the strangers were friendly. Aside from writing, she enjoys reading, traveling, indie films, BBC and quirky American television series, music, amateur photography, and splitting chocolaty desserts with her husband, an engineer who doesn’t understand writers, but understands chocolate.

Julie is currently promoting Home for Erring and Outcast Girls and developing her next novel. She hopes the new novel won’t take another five years to write, but makes no promises, because she believes in sleeping enough, going to tai chi classes as often as possible, eating good food, and writing that takes her into the worlds of characters who allow her to live and breathe with them until they are completely finished telling their stories.