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Julie Young

 

Julie Young decided in her mid-60’s that if she was ever going to be a writer she’d best begin. Many of her stories evoke the people and landscapes of her North Dakota prairie childhood, others are inspired by life in Portland and weekends at the Oregon coast.  She has been published in the North Coast Squid.  Julie is an enthusiastic hiker, golfer, and reader, and admits to being a political junkie.  She and her husband are the parents of six and grandparents of eleven.

On your nightstand:

I’m about to begin Brooklyn by Colin Toibin, then I’ll dip back into Joy Williams’ collection, The Visiting Privilege, and finally I’ll open Golden Age, the final book in Jane Smiley’s trilogy. It’s unusual for me to have a stack of current best sellers, I ought to think about how that happened. I try to read at least two books a year from a list of “100 best books of the last century.”

If you could spend a day with an author, who would it be?

May I have half a day with Alice Munro and the other half with Colum McCann?

Who or what inspires your writing?

My childhood memories as a farm girl on the North Dakota prairie inspire me, not stories about myself, but stories based on composites of people from our county–store keepers, teachers, farmers, ministers–and our large extended family. As I reminisce, I become curious about an event or person and create a narrative that may be far different from fact but could have some vague elements of truth. The setting– the harsh weather and isolation–always enters in.