Born and brought up in Wales in the United Kingdom, Julie Donovan graduated from the University of London with a Law Degree and received further legal training at Chancery Lane College of Law, London. She practiced law for about ten years, becoming a partner in an all-women legal firm specializing in criminal defense work. On a sabbatical from her legal job she realized that she yearned to get back to her love of literature and writing. After completing a Ph.D. in British Literature, with a focus on women's writing of the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries, she returned to a life--long passion for novels, poetry, and plays, which she combines with her love of teaching.