Julia Steele Allen is a writer, performer, community organizer and activist born and raised in NYC.

As an activist, she has helped plan mass actions and convergences like the 1998 Critical Resistance conference, the 1999 WTO Protests, the 2004 Republican National Convention protests, the 2007 United States Social Forum, she was the Week of Action Coordinator of the 2017 People’s Climate March.

As a community organizer, she worked for 9 years in the South Bronx on educational justice issues, including as the Lead Organizer of the New Settlement Parent Action Committee. In 2002 she developed a high school curriculum with Vivian Vazquez Irizarry on the burning of the Bronx in the 1970’s which became the starting point for their documentary film: Decade of Fire. The film premiered in 2018, has gone on to win numerous awards, was screened at 20 film festivals and had a national public broadcast through Independent Lens on PBS. Additionally, Julia has organized community screenings with over 50 grassroots organizations in cities around the country (including Puerto Rico), as the film’s Impact Producer. She is currently working as the Impact Producer for other social issue documentary films.

Since 1997, she has done ongoing activist and solidarity work with youth and adults in prison, including taking human rights abuse testimonies from women in solitary confinement and on death row for a class action lawsuit, teaching classes in a youth detention center and at a men’s prison, doing research and editing for the book “Through the Eyes of the Judged: Autobiographical Sketches by Incarcerated Young Men” (published by Evergreen State College, 2001), and volunteering with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP). In 2005, through CCWP, she met Sara (Mariposa) Fonseca. In 2012 they began collaborating to write the play: Mariposa & the Saint: From Solitary Confinement, A Play Through Letters. From 2014-2017 Julia produced, performed and toured their play across 10 states, performing it over 70 times, as an outreach and organizing tool to end solitary confinement in U.S. prisons.

As a writer she has written and performed several award-winning plays. In 2013 she published a book of poems called The Good Left In Us, and is currently editing a sci-fi/fantasy trilogy she wrote entirely on her subway commute.

With Owen Taylor, she is one-half of the queer country band, My Gay Banjo. Since 2010 they have released four albums and continue to tour nationally.

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