Bio

Julie Sedivy is a hybrid academic and writer who is obsessed with language in all its facets.

On her way to a conventional writing career she was sidelined by taking a linguistics course, which introduced her to the scientific study of language. This proved too much to resist. She went on to earn a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Rochester, where she was involved in pioneering research using eye movements to study spoken language comprehension. She subsequently joined the faculty at Brown University for twelve years, and has published more than thirty scientific articles on language and the mind (links to a few of her pivotal scientific papers can be found at the bottom of the page).

But well into a conventional academic career a funny thing happened: she indulged in some non-academic writing, and this, too, proved too much to resist. She now spends much of her time writing for non-academic audiences, often (but not only) on themes relating to language. She has written for outlets such as Nautilus, Scientific American, Discover, Literary Hub and the popular blog Language Log. Her book, Memory Speaks: On Losing and Reclaiming Language and Self, was named by The Economist as one of the five best books on language in a “golden age of language writing.” Her most recent book is Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love, an embodiment of her relationship to language, both scientific and aesthetic. Linguaphile appeared on The New Yorker‘s Best Books of 2024 list, as well as on the Kirkus list of Best Non-fiction Books of 2024.

She is currently on hiatus as an academic; until recently, she served as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Calgary, affiliated with the School of Languages, Linguistics, Literatures, and Cultures. She is the author of the popular undergraduate textbook Language in Mind: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics in which she links psycholinguistic research to beatboxing, legal investigations, scenes from Mad Men, and other ordinary and extraordinary uses of language. The second edition of this textbook was released in January, 2020, and a third edition may be brewing.

In addition to writing for general audiences, she works with scientist authors to help make their work accessible and riveting to non-scientist readers, offering workshops and editing services.

Julie is an active member of the literary scene in Calgary, Alberta, and can often be found at local readings, sometimes on stage. She has served as a board member and president of the Writers’ Guild of Alberta and is a fervent advocate of artistic and intellectual pursuits at large. Still a believer in civic engagement and civil discourse, she founded and leads a public book club called How Can You Think That?!? in which liberals and conservatives come together to read about discuss each other’s values and perspectives. The group meets monthly at Shelf Life Books in Calgary.

Julie has made numerous appearances on radio (including NPR, BBC, CBC, ABC) and many podcasts, a medium to which she is personally addicted. 

She is the mother of two (objectively) spectacular children, now grown to full adulthood, and the widow of Ian G. Graham, who was a constant source of support and is a continuing inspiration for her writing. She lives in Calgary, but has left pieces of her heart in the Czech Republic, Montreal, and Providence in Rhode Island. She is a citizen of three countries.

A selection of Julie’s scientific papers:

  • Spivey-Knowlton M, and Sedivy, J. (1995). Resolving attachment ambiguities with multiple constraints. Cognition 55(3):227-67. DOI: 10.1016/0010-0277(94)00647-4
  • Tanenhaus, M.K., Spivey-Knowlton, M.J., Eberhard, K.M., and Sedivy, J. (1995). Visual and Linguistic Information in Spoken Language Comprehension. Science 268, 1632–1634.DOI:10.1126/science.7777863
  • Sedivy, J., Tanenhaus, M.K., Chambers, C.G., and Carlson, G.N. (1999). Achieving incremental semantic interpretation through contextual representation. Cognition 22;71(2):109-47. DOI: 10.1016/s0010-0277(99)00025-6
  • Nadig, A.S., and Sedivy, J. (2002). Evidence of perspective-taking constraints in children’s on-line reference resolution. Psychological Science, 13(4), 329–336. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2002.00460.x
  • Sobel, D.M., Sedivy, J., Buchanan, D. W., and Hennessy, R. (2012). Speaker reliability in preschoolers’ inferences about the meanings of novel words. Journal of Child Language, 39(1), 90–104. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000911000018

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