Julie Salamon
New York Times Bestselling Author
Available Now in Bookstores & Online
The definitive story of a shocking act of international terrorism that thrust an ordinary man into history and reshaped the destinies of three families.
Julie Salamon
Daughter of Czech immigrants who were Holocaust survivors, Julie Salamon was raised in Seaman, Ohio, a rural village of 800, where her father was the town doctor. She is a graduate of North Adams (Ohio) High School, Tufts University and New York University School of Law.
She worked at The Wall Street Journal for sixteen years, first as a commodities and banking reporter before spending eleven years as the paper’s film critic. Later she became a staff journalist at The New York Times, where she was a TV critic and arts reporter. Her education continued through fellowships at the MacDowell Colony and as a Kaiser Media Fellow. Along the way she started writing books—fiction and non-fiction, for adults and children– and producing articles for magazines that include The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Bazaar, and The New Republic. So far, the career adds up to hundreds of articles and eleven books: more than 3 million published words.
Julie’s subjects have ranged across show business, philanthropy, the Holocaust, the insanity defense, and modern medical care. Her books have received wide critical and popular attention, among them the international best seller The Devil’s Candy and Wendy and the Lost Boys, the New York Times best-seller biography of playwright Wendy Wasserstein.
Books for Adults
Julie Salamon is the author of nine books for adults, characterized by her ability to shed thought-provoking new light on often-difficult subjects. Early encouragement came with her first book, the 1988 novel White Lies, praised in the New York Times Book Review for its “vivid and evocative” portrayals.
Her 2001 best-seller Facing the Wind, about a sensational murder case, was recognized by NPR’s Fresh Air and The Los Angeles Times as a Best Book of 2001. Writing about Hospital, her 2008 examination of life within a multi-cultural urban medical center, Tom Wolfe described Salamon as “one of America’s best fly-on-the-wall reporters.” Her 1996 family memoir The Net of Dreams became a New York Times Notable Book and winner of an Ohioana Book Award. The Christmas Tree, a novella published in 1996, was a New York Times bestseller, and has been translated into a dozen languages. Rambam’s Ladder, her 2003 meditation on philanthropy and giving, was declared a “much needed guide” by Elie Wiesel. Her celebrated 2011 biography of Wendy Wasserstein, Wendy and the Lost Boys, became a New York Times best-seller. First published in 1991 and reissued a decade later, her best-selling Hollywood classic The Devil’s Candy continues to engage readers as well as industry insiders.
Books for Children
In 2009 the illustrator Jill Weber, whose exquisite paintings appear in The Christmas Tree, sent Julie a newspaper article about a cat named Pretty Boy who lived in the East Village and didn’t belong to anyone—but also to everyone in the neighborhood. He had just died at age 22. Jill wondered if there might be a story there for Julie to write and Jill to illustrate. Julie was busy working on the Wendy Wasserstein biography and tossed the article into a drawer. But she couldn’t stop thinking about that cat….
That was the beginning of Cat in the City, published by Penguin’s Dial Books for Young Readers in September, 2014. Publishers Weekly called its characters “beguiling” and School Library Journal praised the book’s drawings and text as “bittersweet and meaningful. “ The reviewer for Booklist summed up the book as, “a sweet love letter to New York, cats, and what it means to be ‘home.’” The book won the hearts of children and educators, leading to another collaboration between Jill and Julie. The widely-praised Mutt’s Promise, published in 2016, received kudos from The Humane Society for confronting the dark side of puppy mills, while gathering wonderful reviews from newspapers and academic journals.
