Julie is a Burruberongal woman of the Darug Aboriginal nation NSW. She is a novelist, playwright, and poet. While living in remote Northern Territory in Yolngu communities in her early years as a teacher, Julie wrote plays and made giant puppets, masks and costumes with Yolngu students. Her career as a playwright resulted in ten productions at various theatres such as Sydney St Theatre, Belvoir St Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre and Sydney Opera House Studio. Black Mary and Gunjies was published by Aboriginal Studies Press. Her plays have been produced in Arizona, USA and Makassar, Indonesia.  

Her Indigenous crime novel Madukka the River Serpent (UWA Publishing 2022) was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2023 and the Davitt Award 2023. Benevolence, an Indigenous historical novel published by Magabala in 2020, and later published by Harper Collins in the USA and UK, was shortlisted for the Barbara Jefferis Award 2022 and in 2020 was longlisted for the NIB Literary Award and the Voss Literary Prize. Compassion (Magabala 2024) is a sequel to Benevolence.  

Julie wrote the Virtual Reality screenplay There Exists (British Museum 2023). As a poet she is co-recipient of the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Poetry Prize 2016 and winner of the Judith Wright Poetry Prize 2019.