Julia Dahl was born and raised in Fresno, California and currently lives in New York's Hudson Valley with her husband and son. Dahl began her career as a journalist working as a fact-checker at Entertainment Weekly. Since then, she has been an editor at Marie Claire, a freelance reporter at the New York Post, the deputy managing editor of The Crime Report, and a crime and justice reporter for CBS News. She now teaches journalism at NYU.

Dahl's first novel, INVISIBLE CITY, was a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, and won the Barry Award, the Shamus Award, and the Macavity Award for Best First Novel. INVISIBLE CITY was named one of the Boston Globe's Best Books of 2014, and has been translated into eight languages.

Her sequel, Run You Down, was published in June 2015, and Conviction, the third book in the Rebekah Roberts series, was published in 2017. New York Magazine called Conviction “a murder mystery for our tumultuous times,” and it was named one of the best books of 2017 by the Boston Globe and LitHub.

Her fourth novel, a stand-alone called The Missing Hours, was published in September 2021. The New York Times described it as “a great reckoning with the moment we find ourselves in,” and the book was the September 2021 Oxygen Book Club pick. Her fifth novel, a stand-alone called I Dreamed of Falling, received starred reviews from Publisher’s Weekly and Library Journal, which named it their Mystery Pick of the Month. The book was also selected as the Strand Bookstore’s 2024 October Mystery Pick.

Julia Dahl has been a freelance reporter for the New York Post, an associate features editor at Marie Claire, the deputy managing editor of the Crime Report, and a crime and justice reporter for CBSNews.com. Her feature articles have appeared in the Guardian, Fast Company, the Columbia Journalism Review, Business Insider, Seventeen, the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, and Salon, among others.

These days, Dahl teaches journalism and advises students at NYU. She also does freelance manuscript editing and coaching, and teaches online courses for fiction writers.

Dahl has a BA from Yale and masters degrees in creative writing and journalism from The New School and American University, respectively.

After 20 years in New York City, Dahl now lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband and son. Dahl is represented by Stephanie Kip Rostan of Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency.