Julie Melrose Papers. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.

Editor, free-lance journalist, feminist, and community organizer, Julie Melrose graduated from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, with a B.A. in women's studies and medical ethics. She was the first women's editor at the Massachusetts Daily Collegian (the student newspaper) when she became part of a group occupying their offices to press for greater coverage of women's issues. Her free-lance career included investigative pieces, women's health columns, editorials, arts features, and general interest reporting, and her work appeared in Ms., Workplace Democracy, Hampshire Life, Boston Phoenix, Sojourner, Valley Advocate, and Amherst Record, among many others. During the 1970s and early 1980s, Melrose worked as a transcriber and/or oral historian at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and at Columbia University. She implemented the Feminist Writers Oral History Project and interviewed Kathleen Barry, Phyllis Chesler, Andrea Dworkin, Audre Lorde, Robin Morgan, Marge Piercy, Janice Raymond, Gloria Steinem, and Michele Wallace. She was a co-founder of the Women's Forum on Media Violence (1982-1983), was a grantwriter for a number of academic and social service agencies in western Massachusetts (1980s-2003), and was co-organizer of the Environmental Health Coalition of Western Massachusetts (2006- ). At age 35, Melrose was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and her health was further impaired by an injury to her inner ear leading to a balance disorder and cognitive problems.