Biography

Julia B. Cameron (born March 4, 1948) is an American teacher, author, artist, poet, playwright, novelist, filmmaker, composer, and journalist. She is best known for her book The Artist's Way (1992). She also has written many other non-fiction works, short stories, and essays, as well as novels, plays, musicals, and screenplays. Julia Cameron was born in Libertyville, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, and raised Catholic. She was the second oldest of seven children. She started college at Georgetown University before transferring to Fordham University. She wrote for The Washington Post and then Rolling Stone.She met Martin Scorsese while on assignment for Oui Magazine. They married in 1976 and divorced a year later in 1977. They have one daughter, Domenica Cameron-Scorsese, born in 1976. The marriage ended after Scorsese began seeing Liza Minnelli while the three of them were working on New York, New York. Cameron and Scorsese collaborated on three films. Her memoir Floor Sample details her descent into alcoholism and drug addiction, which induced blackouts, paranoia and psychosis. In 1978, reaching a point in her life when writing and drinking could no longer coexist, Cameron stopped abusing drugs and alcohol, and began teaching creative unblocking, eventually publishing the book based on her work: The Artist's Way. At first she sold Xeroxed copies of the book in a local bookstore before it was published by TarcherPerigee in 1992. She contends that creativity is an authentic spiritual path.Cameron has taught filmmaking, creative unblocking, and writing. She has taught at The Smithsonian, Esalen, the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, and the New York Open Center. At Northwestern University, she was writer in residence for film. In 2008 she taught a class at the New York Open Center, The Right to Write, named and modeled after one of her bestselling books, which reveals the importance of writing.Cameron has lived in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico