Willis, Julia, 1949-

Biography

Julia Willis was born August 21, 1949, in Charlotte, North Carolina, daughter of William Clem and Carolyn Willis. She earned her bachelor's degree from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, in 1973. She began her career as an associate editor for Red Clay Books in 1974.

She has written four books including, Reel Time, a comic novel; We Oughta Be in Pictures, for which she was a Lambda Award drama finalist; Who Wears the Tux?, a lesbian quiz book; and Meow-Mories . Her work has also appeared in numerous women’s anthologies.

Julia was a founding member of the women’s comedy troupe, the Ends and Means Committee. She wrote for the lesbian soap opera, Two in Twenty, and her award-winning one-act comedies have been produced by off-off-Broadway and by gay and lesbian theatres around the country. In addition to reviewing for Lambda Book Report and The Lesbian Review of Books, she has written comedy material for the Boston Baked Theater, Terra Infirma on NPR and for Joan Rivers. She has received fellowships and grants from the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation, Massachusetts Artists Foundation, Edward Albee Foundation and MacDowell Colony.

She worked as a freelance writer, poet, producer, comedy writer/performer and a playwright through the 1990s. She has been married since 2006.

From the guide to the Julia Willis papers, 1970-2010, (ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives)