8 Questions for... Julie Gabrielli
Homecoming
’s work as a writer, architect, and professor navigates our time of climate collapse and environmental reconciliation. She is a Clinical Associate Professor in the University of Maryland School of Architecture, Planning, Preservation & Real Estate. She was a founding principal of TerraLogos eco architecture and in 2013, her firm, Gabrielli Design Studio, was named Baltimore Magazine's Best Remodeling Architect.
After participating in the 2019 Orion Environmental Writers workshop, she earned a Fiction MFA from Southern New Hampshire University in 2022. She writes the Homecoming newsletter on Substack, and her work has been published in the magazines Orion, Ecological Home Ideas, and Urbanite; and in literary journals: Dark Mountain Journal #6, #8 and #10; Dark Matter #3 and Immanence.
1. Why Substack?
My newsletter is a way to send messages in bottles to the future... or maybe to a slightly more bereft version of myself, two years from now. While I came here for the freedom, I've stayed for the wonderful people. It's a virtual writers' café, with conversations about craft, boosts of support, and the sheer joy of discovering other beautifully off-kilter minds amidst the internet chaos.
Besides, how can urgent climate fiction compete with a commercial publishing submission process that’s itself a slow-moving cataclysm? Another glacier will melt before an agent or editor even glances sideways at my manuscript.
2. How long did it take you to find your groove?
My About page changes more than the weather, or should I say, climate. This is less about finding a groove and more about launching words into the void and seeing what survives the apocalypse.
3. How has it changed you?
Who knew a newsletter could be a substitute for therapy? This platform has introduced me to a whole cohort of brilliantly creative, wonderfully supportive weirdos. Substack is like a bonfire on a cold night—it attracts the oddballs, the dreamers, the ones who see the world with a mix of wonder, humor, and bare honesty. The feedback and support I've received here have charmed my chronically skittish heart. Turns out, being unabashedly yourself (even when you're a little off) is surprisingly attractive.
4. What mistakes have you made?
You mean I shouldn’t work myself into a stupor comparing myself to the successful brilliant genius writers here? No? Okay. The beauty of Substack is that the shame washes away quickly. Mostly.
5. To pay or not to pay?
For the love of all that's green, why must everything be monetized? All my posts are free, but every volunteer paid subscriber is a little twinkle of hope in the vast, indifferent universe. In gratitude, I send them videos of my dog Brody howl-singing along to my husband’s beginner guitar rendition of “Free Falling.” He’s quite the diva (the dog, not the husband).
Since June 2024, I’ve donated 30% of paid subscriptions each quarter to an environmental organization nominated by readers. This summer, I sent $68 to the Indigenous Environmental Network. This fall, we’re featuring Maryland-based Old Growth Forest Network. Their mission is to protect old-growth, native forests so people of all generations can experience the beauty of nature.
6. What artistic and technical choices have you made?
I slather posts with my watercolors, because why not? My newsletter might be a drop in the ocean, but I’m determined to make it a damn beautiful drop.
I enjoy being read to by authors, so I record audio for my short stories. That’s me, hunched under a thick flannel sheet over my laptop, trying not to overdo acting out the characters’ voices. Learning how to edit with the Audacity app has opened whole new horizons. Possibly not in a good way.
I also record the Thoreau passages for “Talking Back to Walden,” because I think it’s fun for people to hear a woman reading his famous words. Who can say? I keep it casual and approach recordings like a reading at my local bookstore. If they ever invited me to do a reading. In my dreams.
7. What’s been the effect on your writing?
Before Substack, my writing was a behind-closed-doors affair between me, the muse and my notebooks. Now, it's a public exploration through new territories. Architecture essays—why not? Even my students learned something. Take on Thoreau? A peculiar way to spend my time, but intertwining the past and present of environmental writing is strangely fulfilling. Interview and feature the luminous work of my favorite nature writers here? It beats plagiarizing them, which is often my first impulse.
8. In it for the long haul?
I'm overflowing with nutty ideas and impossible questions that demand to be unleashed on this platform... and surprisingly, people are here for it. What can I say? I love the idea that maybe, just maybe, my words can make someone feel less alone as the world burns.
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a virtual writer's cafe is a great way to answer what is Substack? Thanks for making the space more human and sharing!
Indeed, I say on every word you've written here. So glad to have found you. ~ Mary