Julia Blackburn is the daughter of the poet Thomas Blackburn and the painter Rosalie de Meric. She has written two novels (both shortlisted for the Orange Prize), a memoir The Three of Us (winner of the JR Ackerley Award), a collection of poems, Murmurations of Love, Grief and Starlings (Full Circle, 2015) and nine works of non-fiction of which the most recent, Time Song, was published by Cape in 2019. She lives in Suffolk and in Italy.