Julie Modra grew up in the NSW town of Taree and the idyllic seaside community of Forster-Tuncurry. Her grandmother was an Indigenous woman from the Worimi nation in the coastal region. In her teens, Julie wrote poetry as well as puppet plays to be performed in her local church. In her late teens, Julie lived with an elderly couple on their farm. This added the final ingredients, along with her passion for literature, to her becoming her own version of Anne of Green Gables, complete with the red hair and freckles.
Eventually, Julie moved with her husband and children to the bayside area of Redland City, Brisbane, where she raised her three beautiful daughters and refocused on her love of words, becoming a secondary English and History teacher (BA of Arts/BA of Education). She also taught as a sessional lecturer on Western Literary Tradition and Australian Literature.
Julie writes middle-grade fiction as well as adult fiction in the genres of inspirational fiction, literary fiction, historical fiction, and romance. She is a graduate of the Australian Writers' Centre and has facilitated and been involved in numerous writers' workshopping groups. She has a keen interest in the areas of writing craft, developmental editing, and copyediting. She supports other writers in their creative pursuits whenever possible.
When Julie is not writing, she procrastinates by sewing garments to wear; camping off-grid in nature with her wonderful husband, Brian, and their large maremma sheepdog, Shiloh; watching her backyard chickens whilst sipping tea; or babysitting her precious grandson.
Julie's books with Wombat | Rhiza include:
The Boy Who Carried the Sun (Coming 2026)