Julia Flynn Siler

Julia Flynn Siler is a New York Times best-selling author who writes about fascinating people doing extraordinary things—from Hawaii’s last queen to California wine dynasties to the brave women who fought slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Her latest book, The White Devil’s Daughters (Knopf, 2019), earned a New York Times Editors’ Choice nod and proved that truth really is stranger than fiction. She also penned The House of Mondavi and Lost Kingdom, books that made the subjects of battling wine moguls and 19th-century imperialism into equally compelling page-turners. The House of Mondavi has recently been optioned again by Hollywood, which apparently thinks Napa Valley drama might translate well to the big screen.

When not digging through archives or chasing down stories, Julia serves as nonfiction director for California’s Community of Writers and contributes to National Geographic and The Wall Street Journal. She spent a delightful spring this year as an Academic Visitor at Oxford University, pretending to be more scholarly than she actually is. Her most recent piece for the Journal involved following Jane Austen’s footsteps—a perfectly respectable excuse to wander around the English countryside.

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And here’s a much longer description of my path to becoming a writer…

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Julia Flynn Siler is an award-winning author and journalist whose three acclaimed books explore the hidden stories behind American power and ambition.

Her latest work, The White Devil’s Daughters: The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown (Alfred A. Knopf) was a New York Times Book Review “Editors’ Choice” and finalist for a California Book Award.

She is also the author of two New York Times bestsellers: Lost Kingdom: Hawaii’s Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America’s First Imperial Adventure (Grove Atlantic) and The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty (Gotham Books, PenguinRandomHouse) which was honored as a finalist for both a James Beard Award and a Gerald Loeb Award for distinguished reporting.

As a veteran correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek, Siler spent more than two decades reporting from a dozen countries across Europe and the United States. Her beat ranged from biotechnology and cult wines to a princess’s quest to restore a Hawaiian palace’s lost treasures. A graduate of Brown University in American Studies and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, she earned an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School while working as a staff correspondent.

In 1993, she was awarded a fellowship to teach business journalism in Prague, where she organized programming at the Center for Independent Journalism. As a London-based foreign correspondent for BusinessWeek, she was part of reporting teams that won a National Magazine Award and Deadline Club honors.

She later joined the Wall Street Journal as European management correspondent, completing post-graduate work in finance at London Business School during her tenure.

Her journalism career came full circle when a front-page Wall Street Journal story about turmoil within the Mondavi wine empire became the foundation for her first book. The House of Mondavi, published by Gotham Books in 2007, is now in its twelfth printing and was recently optioned again by Hollywood.

Siler’s dedication to rigorous research has earned her prestigious fellowships, including a National Endowment for the Humanities “Public Scholar” fellowship, a Mayborn Fellowship in Biography, and a Logan Nonfiction Fellowship at the Carey Institute for Greater Good. In 2025, she received a Kathy Chamberlain award in biography for her forthcoming book.

Her investigative work continues to garner recognition—her story “The Safe Place That Became Unsafe” won Folio’s Best Investigative Reporting prize, while “A Horrible Death to Die,” about Jane Stanford’s unsolved murder, earned top honors in crime writing from the Los Angeles Press Club.

Currently serving as nonfiction director for California’s Community of Writers, Siler has taught journalism at the University of London’s Birkbeck College and regularly leads workshops. She serves on multiple boards including the Community of Writers and U.C. Berkeley’s Bancroft Library Council of Friends. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and her work has appeared in National Geographic, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Alta Journal, among others.

A California native, Siler is an avid rower and frequent library visitor who joined an Arctic Circle residency expedition to Svalbard in 2022. She spent the first half of 2025 as an academic visitor at Oxford University. Now at work on her fourth book, she continues her exploration of the powerful stories that shape our understanding of history. To learn more, please visit www.juliaflynnsiler.com