Julie Checkoway is an author, documentary filmmaker, and teacher. She was educated at Harvard College (AB Magna Cum Laude 1985), the Iowa Writers Workshop (MFA 1987 ) and Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars (MA, 1989).

In 2019, she agented, developed and ghost-wrote TARGETED (Harper Collins, Oct 22, 2019), by former Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Brittany Kaiser. Targeted chronicled Kaiser’s journey at age 26 from CA’s business development director to international whistleblower at the age of 30. The book provided evidence of the 2016 Trump Campaign digital microtargeting strategies that were effective in suppressive the votes of women, African Americans, and Hispanics in swing states and winning the Presidency. Targeted is in development as a limited series with Checkoway co-producing.

Checkoway’s previous books include the New York Times bestseller, THE THREE YEAR SWIM CLUB (Hachette/Grand Central, 2016), the story of a group of young Japanese-Americans, children of Maui sugar plantation workers, who lived in virtual slavery but who endeavored and succeeded, in the late 1930’s, under the guidance of their intrepid coach Soichi Sakamoto to become national and international champions and Olympic swimmers. Checkoway’s research took place over 5 years in Maui, where she worked with then-living swimmers and their descendants, to gather the story for the first time in book form. She continues to work with the Maui Japanese American community to preserve that story and frequently visits Maui to teach community-based workshops in archival research and writing.

The Three-Year Swim Club received a starred Publisher’s Weekly Review and was covered widely in the news media. It was featured on NPR’s “Here and Now,” and described as a “Remarkable real-life account…about as underdog as it gets.”(Boston Globe); “A brightly told story of the triumph of underdogs… exuberant, well-researched…tense, vivid, and inspiring. (Kirkus Reviews). The book is the winner the Buck Dawson Book Award (International Swimming Hall of Fame, 2016), and is under development as a major motion picture with producers Tim Moore (“Sully,” “The Mule,” “American Sniper,” “Grand Torino”) and Greg Lessans (“A Civil Action,” “My Best Friend’s Girl,” “Wicked.”). As a result of Checkoway book which featured him, coach Soichi Sakamoto’s portrait is now in the Smithsonian’s permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery, an institution dedicated to portraying the people who shape the nation’s history, development and culture.”

Checkoway’s earlier books include CREATING FICTION (Story Press, 1998), a best-selling work that has become a standard text in undergraduate and graduate programs in creative writing. The book includes essays on craft by authors of note, including Jane Smiley and John Barth. Checkoway developed Creating Fiction as a successful revenue-generating tool for then-struggling Associated Writers and Writing Programs, (AWP) is a nonprofit literary organization that provides support, advocacy, resources, and community to nearly 50,000 writers, 500 college and university creative writing programs, and 125 writers’ conferences and centers, for which Checkoway served as the President of the Board of Directors (1995-6).

Checkoway is also the author of LITTLE SISTER: SEARCHING FOR THE SHADOW WORLD OF CHINESE WOMEN (Viking Penguin, 1996), which tells the story of six women in the People’s Republic of China who, in the late 1980’s struggled to piece together their lives in the aftermath of that nation’s Cultural Revolution. The book grew out of Checkoway’s year-long experience in 1988-9, when she worked as a Foreign Expert, teaching American Literature and Writing to undergraduate and graduate students at Hebei University in the industrial city of Shijiazhuang, located some 400 miles south of Beijing.

Throughout her career, Checkoway has taught at a variety of institutions, including holding a full-time position at Gilman School in Baltimore, Maryland (1989-1995), teaching grades 9-12 English and Creative Writing. At Gilman, Checkoway was also the founder of the Reginald S. Tickner Writing Center, the Ticknr Writing Fellows Program, and the AJ Downs Visiting Writers Series, which brought writers of national reputation to Gilman.

Checkoway’s first professorship was at the University of Georgia, Athens, where she received tenure and taught from 1996-2001. There, she was also the Director of UGA’s undergraduate and graduate creative writing programs and founded UGA’s Maymester Creative Writing Program at the University of Oxford, Jesus College. After Georgia, Checkoway became the director of the University of Houston’s MA/PhD program in creative writing (2001-2002), where her work included fundraising and the establishment of 3 new chaired professorships and the active hiring of diverse writers, including Colson Whitehead (THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award Winner). As part of her professorships, she actively served on and chaired dissertation and master thesis committees.

Following Checkoway’s teaching career, she went on to freelance produce radio for NPR and PRI programs All Things Considered and This American Life. Over the years, her work has appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, for whom she is currently working as a freelancer and for which she covered the first known case of Covid19 in the state of California in February of 2020.

In 2008, the documentary she wrote, directed, and produced, WAITING FOR HOCKNEY, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was aired on the Sundance Channel. It was a festival selection nationwide and received coverage in the New York Times and in Variety, among other publications. The film concerned the story of the Baltimore artist Billy Pappas and his epic quest both to make the most detailed pencil portrait ever attempted and to gain the attention and approbation of the well-known, British-born, LA-based artist, David Hockney. Following the making of the documentary, Checkoway was a staff writer for The Salt Lake Tribune from 2008-2009, where she wrote primarily about art, film, and books.

She is a member of the International Society of Olympic Historians and the Author’s Guild. She is also an active volunteer has worked on variety of social justice initiatives, including for the DNC’s anti-voter intimidation initiatives during the 2020 Presidential election and voter registration and get-out-the-vote work for the New Georgia Project.

Checkoway was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts to a working-class family of 9 and, along with her sisters and brothers, became a first-generation college student. She is married to Lee Thomsen, head of Sacramento Country Day School, an independent day school, and she is the mother two.