Hi, I’m Juliana. I write stories. Some of them are long and full of adventure. Others are short enough to read over a cup of tea.
I was born in England but grew up in Brazil, where marmoset monkeys traveled along the urban electrical wires like miniature tightrope walkers. Now I live in Connecticut, USA, in a neighborhood with a ‘bear crossing’ road sign and wandering flocks of wild turkeys. I have yet to live in a town with dragons, but I’m hoping to get there someday.
I’m a member of the SCBWI, SFWA, NESFA, NEHW, BFS, and Broad Universe. I was co-director for the New England SCBWI 2021 and 2022 Spring Conferences.
You can find me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. I’ve been known to show up at the forums on SFF Chronicles under the devious screen name ‘Juliana’.
The extended no-fun-no-dragons bio:
Juliana was born in London, England, to a Brazilian mother and an English father, but moved to São Paulo, Brazil at the age of eight, growing up bilingual and bicultural. They studied Social Science at the University of São Paulo for two years before moving to London to complete a degree in Contemporary Media Practice at the University of Westminster. Returning to Brazil, Juliana worked for a year as Cultural Assistant at the Cultura Inglesa language school, and then spent four years at the Fundação Getulio Vargas business school working for the Public Management and Citizenship Program, an initiative in partnership with the Ford Foundation that studied local government innovations in a variety of areas such as health, citizenship, and education.
Since 2002, Juliana has worked as a freelance English-Portuguese translator, translating art, photography, and travel books, besides countless academic articles and a wide range of other materials.
In 2012, they rekindled an old passion for writing, focusing on science fiction and fantasy. Juliana is the author of the Blade Hunt Chronicles YA series as well as a number of short stories. After moving to the USA in 2013, they now live in Connecticut with their husband, college-aged children, and dog. Alongside writing and translations, Juliana also works as a kids and teen assistant in their local library where they lead a group for young writers.
They are asexual and nonbinary. Their pronouns are they/them.
Five weirdly random things about me:
I began longsword lessons as research for my Blade Hunt series. I only meant to go for one session but ended up staying for over a year. Historical fencing is awesome! #HEMA
I once met the Queen of Denmark, Margrethe II. She was very sweet. I have a photograph of teen me in a hideous 80s floral dress with mahoosive shoulder pads, standing between the Queen and her husband, Prince Henrik.
For my 40th birthday I dragged my husband and kids on a caving holiday. One cave had a tiny tunnel entrance we had to crawl through to reach an underground whirlpool like a witch’s cauldron. In another cave, we waded along a vast underground river that reached up to our chests.
In my early 20s I travelled 13,000 kilometers with a group of friends to Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego, and back to São Paulo, Brazil. Along the way we saw penguins, glaciers, crossed the Strait of Magellan, and crashed the car in the middle of a desert. I’ll never forget the sunset in Torres del Paine!
I own a small chunk of the Berlin Wall. I was a 17-year-old exchange student living in Denmark at the time the Wall fell. We visited Berlin a month later, and I cut out a piece with a chisel borrowed from a young American preacher with an armful of bibles.
Juliana Spink Mills 