We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Julie Mcgue. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Julie below.
Julie , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you walk us through some of the key steps that allowed you move beyond an idea and actually launch?
At 48, I was sent for a breast biopsy. This incident spurred my twin sister and me to research our closed adoption so that we could access family medical history and genealogy. The process took five years. With every twist and turn in the story, every one I related it to said the same thing. “I hope you are writing a book about this.”
I researched memoir writing programs, enrolled in classes, and ten years later, I published my debut memoir, Twice a Daughter. I’ve been at the writing process for fifteen years. I write blogs, columns, articles, essays and books. I marvel that a breast biopsy led to a late in life writing career.
Julie , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Because much of this question was answered in the previous answer, attaching my official bio below.
Much of my writing success is due to knowing my audience. The adoption community is made up of 6-8 million adoptees, so if you extrapolate out to include adoptive and birth parents, friends, and family, the audience is huge. I have tapped into this vast audience with my work.
Julie Ryan McGue is an American writer, a domestic adoptee, and an identical twin. Her first memoir, Twice a Daughter: A Search for Identity, Family, and Belonging (She Writes Press), released in May 2021, won multiple awards. Her work has appeared in the Story Circle Network Journal, Brevity Nonfiction Blog, Imprint News, Adoption.com, Lifetime Adoption Adoptive Families Blog, Adoption & Beyond, and Severance Magazine. Her personal essays have appeared in several anthologies, including Real Women Write: Seeing Through Her Eyes (Story Circle Network) and Art in the Time of Unbearable Crisis (She Writes Press). Her collection of essays, Belonging Matters: Conversations on Adoption, Family, and Kinship (Muse Literary) released in November 2023. She writes a bi-weekly blog and monthly column (The Beacher Newspapers), in which she explores the topics of finding out who you are, where you belong and making sense of it. Julie splits her time between northwest Indiana and Sarasota, Florida. Her third book, Twice the Family: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Sisterhood (She Writes Press) releases in February 2025.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
Before I published my first book in 2021, I began building an author platform in 2016. I set up an author website, began publishing weekly blogs about adoption related topics, pitched my local paper for a byline, and submitted guest articles for publication.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
My goal is to educate, inspire and inform those within the adoption community: adoptees, birth and adoptive parents, and their loved ones about the complicated issues intrinsic to the adoption experience. The search for identity, family, kinship and belonging are at the root of all the pieces I publish. It is crucial that those outside the adoption constellation understand the trauma, stigma, loss and betrayal that those touched by adoption experience.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://juliemcgueauthor.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julieryanmcgue
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/juliemcguewrites
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julie-mcgue-a246b841
- Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/juliermcgue
Image Credits
Mary Lou Johnson Photography, Sarasota, FL