Julie Barlow was born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1968. She moved to Montreal and began learning French in 1987, then started working as a French language journalist in 1996. She lived with her husband, author Jean-Benoît Nadeau, in Paris from 1999-2000 and wrote her first book, Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong (2003), which went on to become an international bestseller. Her next book, The Story of French, won France's 2011 Prix la Renaissance. In 2013, after publishing The Story of Spanish, she returned to Paris with her husband and daughters to write her latest book, The Bonjour Effect (2016). She lives with her family in Montreal, where she works as a journalist, translator and writing instructor.
