Julia Hawkins is a writer. She received her BA in English Literature at San Francisco State University and MA in the Humanities at Dominican University in San Rafael, California, rewriting Sophocles’s Antigone for her thesis.

Hawkins states that “…stories, or literature, feed the human spirit and can nourish democratic, humanistic ideals. It is to stories we go for recreation and relaxation, for information about humankind, the earth, spirituality, everything human curiosity seeks for guidance, enlightenment, reassurance, excitement, and inspiration. Because a good story can inspire and guide concerns about the environment, I have been working on a tale about a poet who, despairing of climate change’s destructiveness, is inspired by his Muse to summon the Olympians to save the earth. The Greek gods, guardians of the earth’s forces and expressions of human instincts, restore mortals’ belief in the earth’s divinity. Western industrialized and monetized behaviors give way to earth-based consciousness, and the earth is saved.”

The novels Hawkins authored are: Celia: A Literary Romance Based on the Tale of Amor and Psyche, 2012, and The Boater Affair, 2013. 

Hawkins was born in San Francisco, California and lives in Cotati, California. 

hawkinsjuliah@gmail.com

“The Earth remembered a time when she could focus on creation. She lifted mountains, spread meadows, planted forests. Her womb teemed. She simmered and teemed with generative powers as she made her circuit around a kindly little star. And in her wisdom, she ordered that each animal, human, each tree, flower, reed, blade of grass return to its natal bed, offering its substance as nourishment that new life might grow and enjoy its day under the sun.

Then a creature naming itself Man evolved who accepted the Earth’s decree of regeneration, not perceiving death’s necessity for new life. The Earth began to suffer as Man eliminated her creatures, wanting their flesh and territory. He took what he wanted and, thinking the Earth’s gifts insufficient, her methods inconvenient, did what he could to manage her himself.

Earth’s cycles fractured and began disintegrating. “I could no longer function,” she told the other planets revolving around the light-and warmth-giving little star who were not blessed as she with generative abilities.

“I began to fear for my very life, and this baffled me. I had thought my gifts ample, my terms generous, my laws reasonable. I was forced to give warnings. I raised the seas, scorched the air, withheld rain. But my admonitions were ignored. Then something new occurred, and I had to defer Man’s expulsion when I heard music, not mine, but one of Mankind’s, a poet’s--.”

— prologue for project written while in residence at Lucid Art Foundation, 2022