Juliana Goodman was born and raised in Blue Island, Illinois. She received her B.A. in English Literature from Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois in 2014 and her MFA in Fiction Writing in 2017 from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Juliana has received several awards and scholarships for her writing and was a 2014 Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Arts Award Finalist as well as a fellow with the Tulsa Artist Fellowship from 2019-2022. Her debut YA novel, The Black Girls Left Standing is a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection and a 2023 Edgar Award Nominee. Juliana is currently at work on her second novel. In her free time, she enjoys watching horror films, reading the latest young adult novels and hanging out with her poodle, Darcy and her cat, Pickle.