Featured Interview With Julia Keanini
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born in a tiny town in the countryside of Japan’s main island. My dad is Japanese, but my mom’s from Delaware so living in small town Japan in the 1980’s was an experience for her, to say the least. She was the only gaijin (foreigner) around and she didn’t even speak the language when she moved there. We all moved to Hawaii when I was three. I think it was a better middle ground for my parents. I loved growing up in such a melting pot, but went away to the mainland (or the continental US) for college where I met my Hawaiian husband. Ironic. We moved back to Hawaii and live here happily with our six-year-old son.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I started reading at around age five and took my head out of my books at about age fifteen. I still love to read, but am better able to balance that love with real life. I always loved to write, but I really started writing about ten years ago when I got married. I have an extraordinarily supportive husband and his belief that I could do anything made me almost believe it too.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I’ll read anything with words and I’ll give any writer and almost any genre at least a chance. But people I’d be sure to read anything and everything from would be Jane Austen, Madeleine L’engle, Shannon Hale, and Lucy Maud Montgomery.
Inspiration in my writing depends on what I’m writing. If I’m writing a sister relationship, then my sisters. If I’m writing about love, my husband. If I’m writing about heartbreak, so many sources. I love to observe people (or as my husband calls it stalk) and I tend to use what I see in what I write.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
The first two books of my series Skinniness is Next to Goddessness? were published last week. It starts with Lacey’s Story. I had an eating disorder in high school and didn’t even know it. Because of that I wanted to tell the story of a girl who still hung out with her friends, had obsessive crushes, but also had an eating disorder. Lacey is a character that’s been unfolding in my mind for years. She hates her body and decides there’s got to be an easier way to lose weight. Instead she loses her way and only finds herself when she meets the Sunday Lunchers, a group of girls who have “bad relationships” with food, just like her. That’s where she meets Anna, star of book two. Anna deals with bulimia, but is also consumed by trying to make it into an Ivy League University and battling her feelings for her cousin’s baby daddy.
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