Julia Dahl was born and raised in Fresno, California. In 1994, she stumbled onto the staff of her high school newspaper and has been chasing stories ever since.
Her first novel, Invisible City, is the story of a New York City tabloid reporter investigating the murder of an Hasidic woman from Borough Park. Invisible City was a finalist for the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award for Best First Novel and was named one of the Boston Globe’s Best Books of 2014. Invisible City also won the Barry, the Shamus, and the Macavity Awards for Best First Novel, and has been translated into eight languages.
The sequel, Run You Down, was published in June 2015, and Conviction, the third book in the Rebekah Roberts series, was published in 2017. New York Magazine called Conviction “a murder mystery for our tumultuous times,” and it was named one of the best books of 2017 by the Boston Globe and LitHub.
Her fourth novel, a stand-alone called The Missing Hours, was published in September 2021. The New York Times called it “a great reckoning with the moment we find ourselves in,” and the book was the September 2021 Oxygen Book Club pick.
Her fifth novel, a stand-alone called I Dreamed of Falling, will be published in September 2024.
Dahl has been a freelance reporter for the New York Post, an associate features editor at Marie Claire, the deputy managing editor of the Crime Report, and a crime and justice reporter for CBSNews.com. Her feature articles have appeared in the Guardian, the Columbia Journalism Review, Business Insider, Seventeen, the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, and Salon, among others.
These days, Dahl teaches journalism and advises students at NYU. She also does freelance manuscript editing and teaches online courses for fiction writers.
Dahl has a BA from Yale and masters degrees in creative writing and journalism from The New School and American University, respectively.
After 20 years in New York City, Dahl now lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband and son.
Dahl is represented by Stephanie Kip Rostan of Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency.
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