Julie Lythcott-Haims author photo

Julie Lythcott-Haims

Julie Lythcott-Haims is an American author and speaker whose work explores parenting, higher education, race, identity, and adulting. A former Stanford dean, she is best known for the New York Times bestseller How to Raise an Adult, as well as the memoir Real American and the guide Your Turn: How to Be an Adult.

Biography & Author's Journey

Julie Lythcott-Haims built her public voice from a life lived across institutions, identities, and regions. She grew up in New York, Wisconsin, and Northern Virginia as the only child of an African-American father and a white British mother, experiences that later became central to her writing about belonging and race. She earned an undergraduate degree in American Studies from Stanford, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and an MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts. Before becoming widely known as an author, she practiced corporate law, joined Stanford Law School as an associate dean, and then spent 14 years at Stanford, including a decade as dean of freshmen and undergraduate advising. Leaving university administration to pursue writing marked the major turn in her career. ((https://www.julielythcotthaims.com/real-american))

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Quotes

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I am not wiser than you
-Your Turn Excerpt
quote
I’m rooting for all of us to be okay
-Your Turn Excerpt
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Childhood needs to teach our kids how to love
-How to Raise Successful Kids Without Overparenting
quote
They need to know they matter to us as humans, not because of their GPA
-How to Raise Successful Kids Without Overparenting
quote
My existence was a ripple in an otherwise smooth sheet
-Real American
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What are you good at? What do you love?
-How to Be an Adult – and How to Raise One
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I finally located a self I could love within blackness
-Here & Now interview
quote
Lead with love—be love—as often as you possibly can
-Walking Each Other Home
quote
It IS just up to you
-5 Tips

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Community Voices

"Julie Lythcott-Haims is a national treasure"

Madeline Levine

"Julie Lythcott-Haims is patient, vulnerable, incisive, and encouraging"

Ibram X. Kendi

"Julie Lythcott-Haims’ memoir, Real American, is not only worth the paper on which it is written, it is priceless"

LaDoris Hazzard Cordell

"Julie Lythcott-Haims has long been one of America’s finest minds and fiercest voices"

Daniel H. Pink

"They say there’s no manual for being a grown-up, but former Stanford dean Julie Lythcott-Haims has finally created one—and it’s a must-read"

Lori Gottlieb

"Fierce and emphatic from the first page, Julie Lythcott-Haims’s self-searching memoir unrolls her own relationship to race"

The Improper Bostonian

"Julie Lythcott-Haims understands that the goal of parenting should be to raise autonomous adults"

William Deresiewicz

"Julie Lythcott-Haims's Real American fuses autobiography with politics"

Shelf Awareness

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