Julia Stuart is an English novelist and journalist. She grew up in the West Midlands, England, and studied French and Spanish. She lived for a period in France and Spain teaching English.
After studying journalism at university, she worked on regional newspapers for six years. She worked for The Independent for eight years. In 2007, she relocated to Bahrain with her husband, who is also a journalist. Her first novel was The Matchmaker of Périgord, the story of a barber in decline who decides to open a matchmaking agency in the small French town of Amor-Sur-Belle. The story was inspired by a visit to Périgord.In 2010 Stuart published her second novel titled Balthazar Jones and the Tower of London Zoo.