Heidi Julavits

Heidi Suzanne Julavits (born 1968) is an American author and co-editor of The Believer magazine. She has been published in The Best Creative Nonfiction Vol. 2, Esquire, Culture+Travel, Story, Zoetrope All-Story, and McSweeney’s Quarterly. Her novels include The Mineral Palace (2000), The Effect of Living Backwards (2003), The Uses of Enchantment (2006), and The Vanishers (2012).

Early life

Heidi Julavits was born and grew up in Portland, Maine, before attending Dartmouth College. She later went on to earn an MFA from Columbia University.

Career

The Believer and others

Julavits wrote the article "Rejoice! Believe! Be Strong and Read Hard!" (subtitled: "A Call For A New Era Of Experimentation, and a Book Culture That Will Support It") in the debut issue of The Believer, a publication that attempts to avoid snarkiness and "give people and books the benefit of the doubt."

In 2005, she told The New York Times Magazine culture writer A.O. Scott how she decided on The Believer's tone: "I really saw 'the end of the book' as originating in the way books are talked about now in our culture and especially in the most esteemed venues for book criticism. It seemed as though their irrelevance was a foregone conclusion, and we were just practicing this quaint exercise of pretending something mattered when of course everyone knew it didn't." She added that her own aim as book critic would be "to endow something with importance, by treating it as an emotional experience."