Julia Munroe Mandeville (she/her, b. 1984) is a writer, maker, curator, community organizer, and social impact innovator whose award-winning civic practice portfolio spans more than two decades, ranging from intimate narrative excavations to vast public engagements. Julia exists for peace, loves to learn, and springs of conviction that everyone deserves security, dignity, belonging, and meaningful choice. A survivor, Julia recognizes creative expression as essential to healing. All of her cultural work blooms from these centerpoints.
Together with her collaborators, Julia has resourced thousands of artists and activists by co-creating hundreds of platforms, from gallery talks to mayoral candidate forums, from solo site-specific commissions to 25,000-citizen cultural celebrations. Currently she serves as Co-Creator of Mirror Bridge, Chief Programs Officer of Harwood Art Center, and Founding Artistic Director of SOMOS Albuquerque Festival.
Julia’s multimodal artist books are published through The Infinite Scroll Project, her library of original research, writing, and mixed media, for which she was juried into the international Creative Writers Cohort & Publishing Seminar at The Center for Book Arts. Her arts and advocacy writing appears in outlets including Edible Magazines, Hand/Eye Magazine, Adobe Airstream, ABQ Free Press, and The Weekly Alibi, for which she was also a weekly arts columnist, and her illustrations appear in Remembrance: A Vision of the Sacred Feminine & the Renewal of the Earth released by Albion Books.
A lifelong learner and grassroots activist, Julia studied political science at Simon’s Rock College of Bard, University of Ghana – Legon, and University of Nevada Las Vegas. Most recently, she completed UPenn School of Social Policy & Practice’s Social Impact Strategy Certificate and Embracing Equity’s New Mexico Educators Certificate. She is an invited full member of the Democracy & Belonging Forum, Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley.
Recent press on Julia’s collaborative civic practice includes features in Hyperallergic, Americans for the Arts ArtsBlog, NPR - KUNM New Mexico, KSFR Santa Fe, KOB, KQRE, New Mexico Living, Edible New Mexico, Local iQ, Albuquerque Business First, and Albuquerque Journal.
For these efforts, and among other recognitions, Julia’s peers have named her the recipient of New Mexico’s Outstanding Young Nonprofit Professional of the Year Award for AFP-YNPN NM National Philanthropy Day Awards; an Americans for the Arts Emerging Leaders Scholarship Award; an Arts Delegate to Turkey for Raindrop Foundation and the City of Albuquerque Appointment; a Local iQ Woman of Culture: 5 Women Driving Local Creative Industry Honor; and an Albuquerque Business First 40 Under 40 Award.
Julia lives, makes, and works on Tiwa Lands, also called Albuquerque New Mexico, with her beloveds James and Iris.