Julia Stuart

Who is Julia Stuart?

Julia Stuart is an English novelist and journalist. She grew up in the West Midlands, England, and studied French and Spanish. She lived for a period in France and Spain teaching English.

After studying journalism, she worked on regional newspapers for six years. In 1999, Stuart won the periodicals category of the Amnesty International UK Media Awards. She was a feature writer for The Independent, and later The Independent on Sunday, for eight years. In 2007 she relocated to Bahrain and Egypt for three years. She graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia in 2013 and currently lives in London.

Her first novel, The Matchmaker of Périgord, was published in 2007. It is the story of a French barber whose business fails on account of his increasingly bald clients. In an attempt to make ends meet, he opens a matchmaking agency in his home village of Amour-Sur-Belle, whose feuding inhabitants subsequently find themselves on blind dates with each another. It was longlisted for Spread the Word: Books to Talk About 2008, a World Book Day award. Rat Pack Filmproduktion, which produced The Wave, have acquired the film rights.