about

Julie Wan’s essays, features, and food and travel journalism have appeared in The Washington Post Magazine, Arts & Letters, The Journal, and public radio’s The Splendid Table, among others. She is the recipient of the Arts & Letters Creative Nonfiction Prize and the William Allen Creative Nonfiction Award. In 2020, she co-founded Vita Poetica, a nonprofit arts organization that connects artists of faith and enlivens spiritual conversation through the arts. She serves as the organization’s chair and managing editor of its literary and arts journal.

Julie has taught writing at the University of Maryland, the Catholic University of America, and the University of Pittsburgh, where she received her MFA in nonfiction writing. A lifelong lover of words and languages, she earned her BA from the University of Arizona with majors in linguistics, English literature, and creative writing, and spent a year studying at the Université Paul Valéry in Montpellier, France. She now spends her days wrangling words for others as an editing professional for academic presses, nonprofits, institutional publications, and individuals. 

Born in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, to Chinese Vietnamese parents, Julie spent her childhood among immigrant communities in Canada and then the U.S. – a journey that often informs her work. She currently lives in Silver Spring, MD, with her husband and two boys.