Julie Williams: Hello, my name is Julie Williams. It's just Julie, not Julia, or Juliet, or Juliana. When I was young and living with my parents, my name was Julie Stanton. When I married for the first time, my side of the family, the white side, wasn't happy about it. His family, the black side, had concerns, too, but they set them aside and welcomed me in. So I became Julie Stanton-Williams.

Some years later when we divorced, and even later, when i remarried, I thought about going back to Julie Stanton. And I thought about taking my new husband's name, and becoming Julie Nakagawa. I love the name Nakagawa, because in Japanese, it means middle of the river.

Finally, I decided to keep the name that I share with my daughter. I suppose you could say that the name of my heart, and my legal name, is Julie Stanton Williams Nakagawa. But the name you'll find on my books is the name I've had the longest, and that I use every day. It's just plain Julie Williams.