Julia Scheeres, journalist and nonfiction writer, has an MA in journalism from the University of Southern California and a BA in Spanish from Calvin College. Her first book, Jesus Land, a memoir about growing up in a rigid Christian environment with an adopted African American brother, was a New York Times and London Times bestseller. Her second, A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Jonestown, won the Northern California Independent Booksellers’ Nonfiction Book of the Year Award in 2012. Scheeres lives in Berkeley with her husband and children.