About me
Julia Golding is a multi-award winning writer for adults, young adults and children. She also writes under the pen names of Joss Stirling and Eve Edwards. Over a million and a half of her books have been sold around the world with best selling titles in a wide range of age categories, such as The Diamond of Drury Lane (children), Finding Sky (YA) and Don’t Trust Me (adult). She is also Director of the Oxford Centre for Fantasy which uses the inspiration of Oxford Fantasy writers such as Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Lewis Carroll to inspire new creativity. For more information go here.
In 2019 she was writer-in-residence at the Royal Institution, the home of science. She can be found taking an early nineteenth century perspective on modern life in her Jane Austen podcast ‘What Would Jane Do?’.
She is also a screenwriter, working on a number of feature and TV series concepts, featuring strong female leads.
Former British diplomat and Oxfam policy adviser, she has now published over sixty books in genres ranging from historical adventure to fantasy. Read carefully and you’ll spot all sorts of material from her diplomatic and Oxfam careers popping up in unexpected places. She has a doctorate in English literature from Oxford.
Studying for this prompted her to write her first novel, The Diamond of Drury Lane, set in 1790 and told by her intrepid heroine, Cat Royal. It went on to win the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2006 and the Nestle Children’s Book Prize 2006 (formerly known as the Smarties Prize). In the US, Secret of the Sirens won the honor book medal of the Green Earth Book Award. Dragonfly won the 2012 Beehive Book Award, Young Adult Division, given by the Children’s Literature Association of Utah and voted on by readers in schools and public libraries.
Writing as Stirling, Finding Sky was shortlisted for the German Children’s Literature Award 2013. Struck won both the YA Romantic Novel and overall prize of the Romantic Novel of the Year 2015 – the first YA book to win the top prize in the long history of this prestigious award. This inspired her to write her first adult novel, Don’t Trust Me.
Her books have been sold worldwide in many languages, so Bienvenido, Willkommen, Witaj, dobro pozhalovat, Yōkoso, Huānyíng and many more!
She is represented by Caroline Walsh, Literary, Film & TV Agents, 6th Floor, Waverley House, 7-12 Noel St, London W1F 8GQ. www.davidhigham.co.uk
Hello Mrs Golding,
my sister and I fell in love with your writing reading the Savant Series. I like the writing style, the stunning stories, which all are special and different, and I specially like the amazing characters.
Now I discovered you are a former Britisch diplomat and Oxfam policy adviser, which impresses me as I want to become a diplomat. However, that’s not the point right now, what I wanted to say:
Thany you for your books and the wonderful hours they bestowed on me!
All the best!
Thank you so much!
Hi,
I really love so many of your series, but my favourites will always be the Cat Royal books, and I was just wondering if there were any plans to release any more?
Hi
The long awaited musical is looking like it might come out in the next year or so and I hope that will give me a chance to rekindle interest in Cat and do the next book. Best wishes
Hola
Amo tus libros y me cautivaron muchísimo la saga Finding love y me preguntaba si ¿harías algún otros libro sobre esta saga? ya que me quede esperando la historia de Víctor
sigue así, eres una de mis escritoras favoritas
Hi Diana
Yes, I have lots of other books. Take a look around this site. You’ll find out more about Victor in Summer Shadows.
Hola
En serio que sus libros son hermosos, son de esos libros que no puedes dejar de leer, pero a la vez no los quieres terminar. A mi me encantan la saga de Finding Love, quisiera saber si los títulos como Zed o los demás estarán publicados en físico.
Hi
The best place to go for you is the V&R website that has my books in Spanish – lots of them, including another series called Peril.
Will we be seeing any new books to the savant series? I’ve re read them so many times would love a new addition!
Thankyou
Not at the moment but you never know!
Hi, I love your Savant series. Thank you!
Hi!
I messaged you via Twitter and you very kindly invited me to message you here, to see if you could help us find the original style cover books of your Cat Royal series. Thank you so much for taking an interest.
Our daughter Betty has books 1 and 2 already and has devoured them! She is now on a mission to find the rest of the series, but crucially the ones with the Cat Royal character photo on the front. So far, it’s not been an easy task!
Betty loves reading but struggles with certain themes, which as she gets older is a little tricky. She wants to read thrilling and exciting stories without being scared out of her wits! She has found these books utterly compelling and has been buried in them every spare moment she’s had! Thank you!
Any help you might be able to offer to find these books for Betty, would be gratefully received.
Many thanks indeed.
Kindest regards,
Wendy
Hi, I messaged you here but it’s disappeared! You kindly invited me to message you here after contacting you on Twitter to ask about your Cat Royal series with the photo style covers for our daughter. Thank you. We would be very grateful if you are able to help us to get these for Betty who loved the first two and has her heart set on reading the set (but has to be with this cover style!). Thank you again. Wendy
Hi,
I’ve seen so many comments about the savant series and I apologise since this is another ???????? is there any of your books that are in the same universe or is similar? I have your peril books too and they are an amazing read!! Thank you
Hi
There are six books so far in that universe.
Hey, I just read Sky, and I really want to know if there’s a published book on Zed’s point of view of the story.
There’s a short story that’s free to download on kindle if you’d like to read that.
Hi, i love all of your books and i have been looking for your book scorched, im from mexico and i couldn’t find it, would you be able to help me please.
Hi Naomi
Thank you for contacting me. Have you contacted the publisher? I think there is a version from VRYA in Spanish. Try tweeting to them on @vreditorasya
Hi there you once went into my primary school and spoke about your series about the mythical creatures, while I only managed to grab secret of the sirens that day I reread it today and it’s just as amazing as I remember! Good day to you
Thank you!
Hallo ?
Thank you so much for your books! I love all of Them so far. Especially the savants and the universal series.
I have All the available audiobooks on audible, but I wondered if anymore audiobooks exists on any other platform? I love your stories and they seem perfect for audiobook I think. Again Thank you for work?
HI
All that have been made are available on Audible but I really must make sure the others are available too by getting them recorded – thanks for the prompt.
Thank you! It would be so nice to listen to more of your stories ?
Hi 🙂
I’ve been reading your savant series over and over for years and I absolutely love it! But I never actually got to read the short stories of Zed, Yves and Xav you published. I found “Challenging Zed” and “Teasing Xav” and finished both today but for some reason I’m not able to find “Burning Yves” on Amazon/Kindle. I’m not sure why that is, do you think you could help me if it isn’t too much of a problem? Thank you in advance, I really love your writing!
Thank you so much. I haven’t checked recently. Perhaps OUP stopped making it available. I’ll look into it.
Hello,
I was wondering where I could find the books “Burning Yves” and “Challenging Zed”. I have looked for them around the Internet and even from Kindle but no result. Have they disappeared somewhere? The only one I could find was “Teasing Xav”.
I’ll have to dig out my original pdf – I think OUP have stopped making it available. It was about ten years ago that we first put them out.
Is it possible to find them?
Yes – I’ve just made a book of all three of them on Kindle: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Benedict-Boys-Collection-Challenging-Burning-ebook/dp/B0BZZS53FX/ There’s a small charge under the self-published route of 77p. Or you can also buy it as book!
Hello
Yes I just saw the book on Amazon a couple of hours ago and I am super thankful and grateful.
I discovered your books about a year ago and the very first book I read was “Stealing Phoenix”, which I found in my school’s library. And I absolutely fell in love + I also found the other two books aswell. At the moment I’m trying my best to purchase all the Savant series books and I currently own only one book but two other books are on the way.
The Savant series has become my comfort book series.
I am thanking again for responding to me and finding the solution to my problem.
Your writing is amazing and the books are wonderful too. I can’t wait to read more books from you.
Hello Mrs. Stirling.
Your books marked my life as teenager as then as a young adult. I love them since the very first moment I saw them. They always were my other life and I will forever enjoy them.
Greetings from Mexico.
Thank you very much…????????
Dear Mrs. Golding,
When I was about 11 years old I found the book Finding sky and I fell in love with the book, the characters and reading (it’s the only book that I have reread many times). I always loved reading as a kid but this really started my bookworm era (it never stopped). I was so bummed that I couldn’t find the fourth book in the series and I thought you had stopped writing. Today I discovered through Goodreads that you wrote the whole series. I am 22 and just got married but I will read the books and I am so excited. Thank you for writing such wonderful books and sparking my love for reading.
I’m so pleased you found them. I didn’t stop writing at all but have gone on to do many other things.
Hello Mrs. Golding,
I am currently reading through the Cat Royal series (loving it!) and I am trying to find The Middle Passage, but none of the ebook versions are available. Is there any way I can read it? I’m intrigued and have looked everywhere!
Thank you so much!
Dear Mrs. Golding,
I received The Diamond of Drury Lane as a Christmas gift when I was around 10 years old and I loved it. I read the second book directly after but I couldn’t read the others because they weren’t translated in my native language and I didn’t speak English yet. I couldn’t wait to learn English so I could read the other books from the series, and as soon as my English was good enough I bought them all on Kindle.
I reread the whole series many times over since then and I was wondering if you ever planned on writing another Cat Royal book? Cat’s Cradle was great, but it would be super nice to know what happened to Cat after and what she ended up doing as an adult. Would you consider even writing an epilogue for the (now adult) Cat fans so we can find out how her life turned out, if there won’t be another book? To be honest, now that I read them being older, I am very curious who Cat ended up marrying (if she ever did), and I was (secretly) rooting for Billy.
I love these books and they became some of my comfort books that I read whenever I am going through a stressful time.
Thank you!!
Hi
I’d love to go back to her but it didn’t happen with the publisher I was with. Funnily enough I’m revisiting that world for adults in my next novel The Persephone Code out in April. I might have to give Cat an appearance in that series as she fits into the period.
Thank you for your answer! I am looking forward to reading The Persephone Code when it comes out!