about

attention

is where every story begins.

I write fiction and poetry drawn to memory, family, place, and the quiet beauty of ordinary life. Living among the gardens and woodlands of western Massachusetts, I find continual inspiration in the changing seasons and the stories hidden within them.

Writing has always begun with paying attention to the stories carried in families, the persistence of the natural world, and the moments that often pass unnoticed. Whether I’m tending a garden, walking woodland paths, or sitting at my desk, I return to the same practice: observing closely and trusting that meaning reveals itself over time.

biography

Raised in London and now living in the hills of western Massachusetts, Julie Esther Fisher has long been drawn to the hidden lives of people, places, and the natural world. Her fiction and poetry explore memory, belonging, and restoration, finding in both art and nature a language for what is difficult to name. Her writing grows less from a search for answers than from a faith in curiosity, close attention, and the quiet conversations that literature invites between writer and reader.

Her stories and poetry have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Waxwing, Radar Poetry, The Citron Review, Prime Number Magazine, Tahoma Literary Review, On the Seawall, Sky Island Journal, Litmosphere, Leon Literary Review, Passager’s 2025 Contest Issue, and many other publications. Her work has received numerous honours, including the Grand Prize in the Stories That Need to Be Told Anthology, Sheila-Na-Gig’s Editor’s Choice Award in Poetry, and Sunspot Lit’s Rigel Award. She has also been shortlisted for numerous literary prizes and received multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. She holds degrees in fiction writing and counselling psychology. Julie lives with her classical musician husband and their two rescue dogs on several hundred acres of conserved land in Hawley, Massachusetts. There she writes, designs gardens, and lives among the changing seasons, the quiet persistence of the natural world, and the hidden stories waiting to be discovered within it.