Contemporary Authors

• Wonderblood ( novel) St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2018

• Author's site - http://juliawhicker.com/

  Julia Whicker is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop where she won both the prestigious Capote Fellowship and the Teaching-Writing Fellowship. She’s had her poetry published in the Iowa Review, Word Riot and The Millions, among others, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. A version of the first chapter of Wonderblood was published in the literary journal, Unstuck.

  She lives with her husband and daughter in State College, Pennsylvania.

  Publications

  Wonderblood, forthcoming 3 April 2018 from St. Martin’s Press. Available for pre-order (hardback and ebook) now from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Indiebound, Books-a-Million, and Powells.

  The Iowa Review Fall 2013, poems.

  Unstuck Volume 1, Wonderblood.

• Macmillan - https://us.macmillan.com/author/juliawhicker/

  Julia Whicker received her MFA at the Iowa Writers Workshop in 2006, where she won both the prestigious Capote Fellowship and the Teaching-Writing Fellowship. She’s had her poetry published in the Iowa Review, Word Riot, and The Millions, among others, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. A version of the first chapter of Wonderblood was published in the literary journal, Unstuck.

• Millions - https://themillions.com/2010/01/novels-and-unicycles-writing-for-attention.html

  QUOTED: "The personal style blog is a brazenly self-centered medium, to be sure, but I’m not convinced it’s any more self-centered than writing a novel. The two seem, at last, wildly similar in that they are both extraordinarily personal and all-consuming, they require a certain abandon that must compete with the inherent pretension that arises from remaking the world in your own image."
  "That forced exhibitionism has helped me forge a bridge between the opposing shores of my artistic personality. Reluctance can be virtually indistinguishable from indulgence. You’re an artist if you do it when no one’s looking, certainly. But you must be willing to do it when they stare, too."

  Novels and Unicycles: Writing for Attention
  Essays
  Julia Whicker January 15, 2010 | 33 6 min read

  coverLast summer, I started a personal style blog to help me get over myself. After a protracted and exhausting internal debate concerning the balance of my literary talent with my actual ambition, I decided that writing some would be better than writing none. I’d reached a point in my writing life, between finishing the first draft of a crappy YA novel and beginning anew on the historical novel I’ve been pecking at since grad school, when I finally admitted I was terrified to pick up the pen (metaphor: I type, like everyone else). Here you can insert all the usual clichés about paralyzed writers, and all of them would probably be appropriate, to some extent, but if you want to know why I was really scared, I’ll tell you: I was afraid of being known. I did not want to be published.

  Oh, the vanity! That a mostly unpublished young thing would even fancy herself worthy of publication, especially since several of my writer friends have been peddling their fully-formed and radiant manuscripts for months and years with little success. But please, don’t misunderstand: I don’t mean to imply my novel is so remarkable it will instantly be snapped up by some agent type who’ll in turn get me a rad book deal so I won’t have to work for a whole year – that, truthfully, is the least of my worries. No, what’s scary is that sometimes, when I’m lying awake at night feeling guilty because I didn’t write, or because I wrote badly, I begin to wonder if the construction of fictional worlds isn’t just a huge cry for attention, a giant Hey-Ma-Look-What-I-Can-Do! I wonder if I’m as bad as the artfully disheveled hipster who occasionally teeters down my block on his gigantic 1890s-style unicycle. He gets stared at a lot. He knows it. He loves it; otherwise why would he be riding a unicycle? But late at night, when I’m afraid, when I’m alone, I wonder if my novel isn’t just my unicycle, and if being published would be tantamount to indulging one of the most already indulgent parts of my personality.

  The only thing I’ve ever been really good at, besides writing, is dressing myself (but please don’t make fun), and I figured there was no place to get over my fear of being exposed as a prideful and self-absorbed jerk than the good old fashioned internet, where every misuse of a word and/or luminous musing is always and forever preserved until the end of time. A little like publication. When I googled my name last July I found only these links: a school essay about an all-black boarding school I wrote when I was nineteen, many Victorian ladies on ancestry.com who weren’t me, some girl in New Zealand who’s a lawyer and also not me, and a transcript of a 911 call I made when I thought I heard someone outside my window. I’m not on Facebook anymore, I don’t Twitter and my Friendster page must be defunct after six years of dormancy. My internet presence was lacking, even though I swear I’ve done stuff to warrant internet space, and though this did incur in me a certain contrarian pride, it also made me feel… phobic. My husband, a physician, tells me the best way to conquer a phobia is through desensitization. Though I was and am still deeply ambivalent about the blog as an artistic medium, I did what any person concerned with the larger intemperance of the soul would do: I started a blog that’s all about me! I self-published, in a manner of speaking.

  I set some ground rules for myself. I’d wear a new outfit and photograph it, every single day—that would be my job. But I wouldn’t stress over the blog’s textual content; if the best I could say about a particular ensemble was, “I got this dress in Prague and later I spilled chocolate milk on it,” that was going to be it. I told no one of my endeavor at first, not even my husband. I was embarrassed, because my reasons for blogging seemed cowardly and weak, even to me. I honestly thought I’d try it for a month and then quit.

  I don’t think I had any visitors that first week. Maybe not the second, either. This made it easier, not harder, to keep going, and soon I made a discovery: the text was the easy part! I felt unbound in this medium, free to be silly or lame or funny or barbed, because I didn’t know who, if anyone, was reading. My novel used to occupy that space for me (and what a glorious space it had been, one where the all daring possibilities of fiction seemed exuberant and not weighty, one where my responsibility was only to spin a tale, not to become an Author!), but as more and more of my friends from grad school published their story collections or first novels, my own novel ceased to be something I wanted to write and became something I had to write, to measure up.

  That is no reason to write, not really. I understand now what a claustrophobic effect comparison has on the creative mind, and I believe most writers ultimately find their own ways to leap this hurdle, but for me, this year, it has been the enforced narcissism of my blog that’s shaken me down from my Tree of Pretentious Reluctance. Slowly, very slowly, people began reading my posts. I got more comments, a few laudatory emails, even a sponsor who wanted to send me free stuff. Then I surprised myself; I didn’t quit. In fact, I emailed a few close friends and asked them to read it. Some of them didn’t respond, and some of them are now regular readers. A lot like when I write a story!

  The blog has caused me none of the internal discord my novel has: photos of me aren’t me. Of course, a story is just a story, not me and of course all me, but ultimately it’s an entity so separate that I cannot count anyone’s embrace or rejection of it as anything personal. My novel had become my raison d’être—it was all I was worth and it terrified me to let it into the world. But in the blogosphere, I’m as anonymous as the next sixteen-year-old girl from Minnesota who’s just ripped into her delivery from Topshop and is showing off her new feathered bolero to her three readers, two of whom are probably her real-life friends. My pictures are viewed, judged, passed on, and forgotten. I am published, I am rejected and extolled, and I am still basically unknown. And I love it.

  One might be tempted to ask if this anonymity cancels out a personal style blog’s innate vanity. It’s complicated: the two seem to coexist, to feed one another and keep each other warm and even, sometimes, to kiss each other goodnight. Vanity helps anonymity get dressed in the morning, and anonymity helps vanity forget all the mean things the kids said at recess. I wear many things on the blog I wouldn’t in “real life” just as I often write about things I have no intention of doing, but it’s the courage and the daring that fortify my soul. The result of that adrenaline rush is that I don’t care if you don’t like what I’m wearing. My writing, at the end of the day, must be based on the same principles—and there’s indulgence in that, sure, but there’s also comfort in the anonymity/vanity dichotomy. I’m doing it for me, and you if you want to look, but mostly me.

  The personal style blog is a brazenly self-centered medium, to be sure, but I’m not convinced it’s any more self-centered than writing a novel. The two seem, at last, wildly similar in that they are both extraordinarily personal and all-consuming, they require a certain abandon that must compete with the inherent pretension that arises from remaking the world in your own image. That forced exhibitionism has helped me forge a bridge between the opposing shores of my artistic personality. Reluctance can be virtually indistinguishable from indulgence. You’re an artist if you do it when no one’s looking, certainly. But you must be willing to do it when they stare, too.
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  Julia Whicker is a writer living in Richmond, Virginia. She was a Teaching Writing Fellow at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and is an enthusiastic proponent of costumery as escapism. She is also the author of Crooked Water, an unpublished YA novel. She blogs at Song of the Exile

QUOTED: "The story's voice is vibrant and warm as the Florida heat; but the pacing drags."
"The plot meanders sluggishly."

Wonderblood
Publishers Weekly. 264.46 (Nov. 13, 2017): p43.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Wonderblood

Julia Whicker. St. Martin's, $26.99 (304p) ISBN 978-1-250-06606-0

Strange people encounter stranger adventures while traversing a post-apocalyptic America in this unsatisfying debut. In the Eon of Pain, a diseased wasteland is cleansed by the doctrine of Wonderblood, which orders the faithful to sanctify the landscape through beheadings in monstrous carnivals. Aurora, a teenage girl, is captured by Capulatio, an executioner with ambitions of becoming king. Aided by his wife, Orchid, an executionatrix and the scribe of his holy visions, Capulatio makes his way toward Cape Canaveral, Fla., seat of the king, determined to bring a new age. He also decides, despite Orchid's objections, that Aurora will be his queen. As Capulatio begins challenging the throne, two lights appear in the sky, as if to confirm the ending of one age and the beginning of another. Told in rich, dense prose, Whicker's fantasy feels like a blood-steeped dream: there are mummified heads and a religion based on astronauts. The story's voice is vibrant and warm as the Florida heat; but the pacing drags under the weight of the description, and the plot meanders sluggishly, with detours that make the journey feel far longer than it should. (Apr.)

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Wonderblood." Publishers Weekly, 13 Nov. 2017, p. 43. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A515325999/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=0df09728. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A515325999

• megsbookrack
  http://megsbookrack.com/review-wonderblood-by-julia-whicker/
  Word count: 615

  QUOTED: "not just agreeable but at times absolutely lyrical."
  "One of my biggest disappointments for this book was the lack of character development."
  "The atmosphere was [not] strong enough to make up for the lack of character development."
  "The execution overall fell a little flat."

  Review: Wonderblood by Julia Whicker
  January 5, 2018 ~ megs14malloy

  Expected Publication Date: April 2018

  Firstly, hello bookworld! I have been very absent lately on what I believed to be a 1-week Christmas vacation that has since turned into a 2-week Christmas vacation. Yes, you read right! Unexpected 2-week vacation. Due to inclement weather I have been unable to get back home – part of the joy of living on an island!

  Okay, back to the topic – Wonderblood by Julia Whicker! I finished Wonderblood late last night and needed to sleep on it before I could formulate my thoughts into a coherent review. Firstly, this is a debut novel for Julia Whicker and although this book did not blow me away, I would certainly be interested in other books (unrelated to this one) that she may write in the future. I enjoyed her writing style a lot which was not just agreeable but at times absolutely lyrical.

  At the beginning of the book, literally the first 10 to 15-pages, there was some content that almost made me give it up. It did not grab me at all and in fact certain elements of it turned me off. It is an adult sci-fi novel that is set in a very gritty, very harsh post-apocalyptic wasteland. There are triggers for abuse, child rape, sibling incest and/or sibling molestation; I could see this causing a lot of people to turn away very quickly from this book. If you can get by that, it does get a lot better and I am glad that I stuck with it.

  The middle is where I feel the story is at its strongest, with political intrigue and an interesting “religious” system. The story does take place in a future United States, which has had its population decimated by a mad cow-like disease – this story picks up in the aftermath of that although we never learn too much about the chain of events prior to the current action. Quite generally, it reminded me of Mad Max meets The Road.

  One of my biggest disappointments for this book was the lack of character development. I came away just feeling blah about all of the characters – there were none that I related too or even felt that I knew enough about to care for in any way. If this were a start to a series (I am not sure if it is slated as a stand-alone or a series), I would not pick up the second book, really because I just do not care what happens to any of these characters. Additionally, I didn’t feel like the atmosphere was strong enough to make up for the lack of character development.

  Mainly, I gave this three stars due to the writing style of the author and the unique ideas included in the world she was creating – for example, I loved that the characters worshiped NASA space shuttles and had Cape Canaveral as their holiest of sites – but the execution overall fell a little flat for me. Please note, I was given a copy of this book from the publisher, St. Martin’s Press, in exchange for an honest review. I certainly appreciate the opportunity to read it, comment on it and am excited to hear what other readers think of this story!