Julia B. Cameron (born March 4, 1948[1]) is an American teacher, author, artist, poet, playwright, novelist, filmmaker, composer, and journalist. She is best known for her book The Artist's Way (1992). She also has written many other non-fiction works, short stories, and essays, as well as novels, plays, musicals, and screenplays.
She met Martin Scorsese while on assignment for Oui Magazine.[2] They married in 1976 and divorced a year later in 1977. They have one daughter, Domenica Cameron-Scorsese, born in 1976. The marriage ended after Scorsese began seeing Liza Minnelli while the three of them were working on New York, New York.[2] Cameron and Scorsese collaborated on three films. Her memoir Floor Sample details her descent into alcoholism and drug addiction, which induced blackouts, paranoia and psychosis.[4] In 1978, reaching a point in her life when writing and drinking could no longer coexist,[5] Cameron stopped abusing drugs and alcohol, and began teaching creative unblocking, eventually publishing the book based on her work: The Artist's Way.[4] At first she sold Xeroxed copies of the book in a local bookstore before it was published by TarcherPerigee in 1992.[2] She contends that creativity is an authentic spiritual path.[3]
Cameron has taught filmmaking, creative unblocking, and writing. She has taught at The Smithsonian, Esalen, the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, and the New York Open Center.[3] At Northwestern University, she was writer in residence for film.[3] In 2008 she taught a class at the New York Open Center, The Right to Write, named and modeled after one of her bestselling books, which reveals the importance of writing.[6]
