Julia Dahl was born and raised in Fresno, California. After almost 20 years in New York City, she now lives in New York's Hudson Valley with her husband and son.

Dahl began her career as a journalist working as a fact-checker at Entertainment Weekly. Since then, she has been an editor at Marie Claire, a freelance reporter at the New York Post, the deputy managing editor of The Crime Report, and a crime and justice reporter for CBS News.

She now teaches journalism at NYU.

Dahl's first novel, INVISIBLE CITY, was a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, and won the Barry Award, the Shamus Award, and the Macavity Award for Best First Novel. INVISIBLE CITY named one of the Boston Globe's Best Books of 2014, and has been translated into eight languages.