Julia Bartz

Blackbriar, a remote estate in the Adirondacks, is where Julia Bartz put the five writers of her first novel. The Writing Retreat, published by Simon & Schuster in 2023, gives each of them 28 days to finish a book for their host, the celebrated horror novelist Roza Vallo, with a million-dollar advance going to the best manuscript, and the month turns steadily against them. It became a bestseller. Bartz holds a licence to practise therapy in New York state and graduated from Hunter College in New York; alongside that clinical work she works as a creative coach, and she has reviewed crime fiction for CrimeReads. A second thriller, The Last Session, followed in 2025. Her sister is the novelist Andrea Bartz.