Julee Balko

speaker

173 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 21 Jul

Julee Balko’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Uncorking a Story · Square Hearts and Second Chances, with Julee Balko · 21 Jul 2026 podcast

My favorite thing about Square Hearts is it's a second chance love story with a twist because it was just as important for me to write a love story where the woman falls back in love with herself as much as falling in love with a man.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me back.

It's exciting.

I always say that my story began before I was born because I don't remember ever not writing or not thinking in words.

Um I joke that my mother would say I came out with a pencil, but that seems a little gross now.

Um but I really always as a kid who loved to write and had a journal and was always thinking in words.

It explains why I write about uh troublesome mother daughter relationships.

Maybe that's where it started.

So in fourth grade and fifth grade, both of my teachers made such a big deal about my writing that somehow it just became a part of me and I thought, one day I want to be an author and um, you know, my day job is a writer.

Uh so yeah, that's all it took was a few teachers who had believed in me and then I believed in myself.

Yeah, definitely.

I don't I don't think I would have um

Just realized that or you know, they made me feel special and then I believed in that and then that just kind of fostered my creativity and I really it's really what kinda drove me to keep keep writing.

So you never know, your fourth grade teacher could decide your career.

I I do know that my fourth grade teacher read my first book 'cause someone had given it to her.

So that's pretty cool.

My yeah, my first book was uh heavily about grief and followed the Greek journey as part of the creative theme.

Um and yes, I wrote it after my mother had passed and felt like grief was super lonely and nobody writes about it enough.

Which is why in Square Hearts I revisit grief again, but it's more about how it becomes part of your story and how you kind of live live with it and learn to love again with it.

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