Julia Barton

Julia Barton is a long-time public media editor and a freelance reporter for PRI's The World.

Julia is a long-time public media editor and reporter. She started freelancing for PRI’s The World in 1999, and has reported from Russia, Ukraine and the US/Mexico border. Her work has appeared on Radiolab, NPR News, Marketplace, PRI's Studio 360, and the podcast 99% Invisible, among other shows.Julia is the former senior editor for Across Women’s Lives, PRI's special coverage of gender equity and the role of women in society. Julia has been an editor for APM’s Weekend America and the podcast Life of the Law, as well as editorial coordinator for PRX's Radiotopia podcast network. She earned an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa and got her start in radio as a board-op at WSUI in Iowa City, where she cut reel-to-reel tape with razor blades in the world before digital audio took over.

Live in the Studio: Bahamas

March 24, 2018Arts, Culture & Media

Singer-songwriter Afie Jurvanen, who records as Bahamas, romanticizes faraway people and places in his music — including the Bahamas, where he’s never set foot.

You Should Finally Read “Infinite Jest”

March 24, 2018Arts, Culture & Media

Returning to the secret government lab where my grandfather worked

March 23, 2017Culture

The the main club house inside Mezhgorye, the residence of Ukraine's ousted president Victor Yanukovych.

Ukrainians vowed to turn their ex-president’s estate into a ‘Museum of Corruption.’ But it’s something else now.

July 22, 2016Conflict

Georgiy Gaidamaka left his native Simferopol, in Crimea, after the Russian government said it would cut end the methadone substitution therapy he’d relied on to treat his heroin addiction. Now he lives in Kiev, where he builds amplifiers from old Soviet

For Ukrainians displaced by conflict, there’s no going back

May 30, 2016Conflict

The failed socialist utopian dream that helped Dallas become a major city

March 23, 2016Culture

Dallas may not have ever become a major city were it not for a the failed efforts of a French socialist dreamer.

This children’s book is starting a national conversation about corruption in Liberia

February 10, 2016Books

Liberian academic and author Robtel Neajai Pailey says children, with their curiosity and strong sense of right and wrong, are the natural audience for a book about corruption. So she wrote one.

After a fracas over French ‘male-only’ prize for graphic novelists, world takes note of women artists

January 7, 2016Arts

For 43 years, graphic novelists and comics artists have gathered in the French town of Angoulême to celebrate their burgeoning art and award prizes. But in all that time, only one woman has won the Grand Prix, a “lifetime achievement” award. After this year’s list of 30 nominees contained no women at all, an uproar ensued.

In Brooklyn, a big Muslim voice sounds out against terror

November 16, 2015Conflict

New York has immigrants from around the world, including huge numbers who practice Islam. Many Muslim communities here faced heavy-handed law enforcement tactics after 9/11, but they’ve since worked hard to defuse tensions and improve relations with federal and local authorities. The rise of ISIS as some community advocates furious.

The story of one girl who fought abduction, and the lawyers who saved her life

October 22, 2015Justice

“Difret” means “to dare” or “courage” in the Amharic language of Ethiopia. A new film by that name tells the story of an Ethiopian girl who was kidnapped by men on horseback to enforce a “traditional” marriage. She fought back, and then had to defend her life in court. Now, thanks to Angelina Jolie, the world will see her story.