How did you become a writer? First I became a reader. I loved stories as a kid: fairy tales, Roald Dahl, Nancy Drew and the Boxcar Children and the Hardy Boys...after a few years of reading, I started trying to imitate what I loved by writing my own stories in blank notebooks. Thankfully, the grown-ups around me encouraged this writing habit, and things took off from there. 

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.) My second-grade teacher, Mrs. Fine; the Brothers Grimm, Stephen King and Anne Rice; Vladimir Nabokov and Gabriel García Márquez; Barbara Kingsolver, Alice Munro, and Louise Erdrich; The Anatomy of Story by John Truby.

When and where do you write? Lying down in bed, and usually right before—or right as—I fall asleep.

What are you working on now? I'm really excited to be working on a third novel that grapples with some of the same themes I've written about before but approaches them in a new way. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? Oh, yes, I sure have. My favorite work on this subject comes from Alexander Chee, who says that we stop writing to try to protect ourselves because we're afraid our idea will humiliate us. His advice is that we have to forgive ourselves the humiliation in order to get going again. And that has definitely been my experience. 

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? Honestly, maybe the above. Or anything the author Mira Jacob has ever said—I remember she told me at one point that the first novel takes ten years, and I couldn't believe it at the time, and then...it did. And I was so glad to have her soothing, normalizing, patient voice in my mind, reminding me that it takes a decade and saying that it's all right.

What’s your advice to new writers? It's not new advice but it's highly effective: read as much as possible, write as much as possible, and find yourself a writing community.

Julia Phillips is the author of the bestselling novels Bear and Disappearing Earth, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year. A 2024 Guggenheim fellow, she lives with her family in Brooklyn.