Julian Randall is a Living Queer Black author from Chicago. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem, CantoMundo, Callaloo, and the Watering Hole. Julian is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and the winner of the 2019 Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award from the Publishing Triangle.

His writing has been published in New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, and POETRY, and anthologized in Black Boy Joy (which debuted at #1 on the NYT Best Seller list), Wild Tongues Can’t Be Tamed, and Furious Flower. Julian has essays in The Atlantic, Vibe Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books and other venues. They hold an MFA in poetry from University of Mississippi.

Julian is the author of five books across three genres. For adults Refuse (Pitt, 2018), winner of the 2017 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and a finalist for a 2019 NAACP Image Award and the forthcoming The Dead Don’t Need Reminding: In Search of Fugitives, Mississippi and Black TV Nerd Shit (Bold Type Books, May 2024). For younger readers: the Pilar Ramirez duology and the forthcoming middle grade novel The Chainbreakers (all from Holt Books for Young Readers).