Julia Riew

Julia Riew is an American composer-lyricist, librettist, and songwriter.

Early life and education

Riew is a third generation Korean-American who grew up in St. Louis, Missouri.^[1][2] She was involved with music from a young age, starting violin lessons at age 4. She began writing music at age 7, and had written a musical of her own by age 15.^[3] While in school, she was a member of the St. Louis Children's Choirs^[4] and the Arch City Kids Theater Troupe, which put on cabarets to raise money for juvenile diabetes.^[2] Her family later moved to New York City and then Connecticut.^[5]

She attended Harvard University. Although initially in a pre-med program, she graduated in May 2022 with a concentration in Theater, Dance, and Media and Music.^[1][6][7] While there, she was a founding member of the Asian Students Arts Project.^[2]

Musical theater

College work

Riew wrote her first college musical, Hitched, in 2018.^[7] In April 2019, East Side, a student-produced musical Riew co-wrote about a Chinese-American family dealing with gentrification in New York City, premiered at Harvard's Farkas Hall.^[8] After seeing the show, the American Repertory Theater (ART) commissioned Riew to write two family oriented shows: Thumbelina: A Little Musical, which premiered in December 2019 at the Loeb Center, and Jack and the Beanstalk: A Musical Adventure.^[2] In June 2022 she premiered Alice's Wonderland at the Coterie Theater in Kansas City, Missouri, a show she co-wrote with J. Quinton Johnson.^[7]

Dive

For her senior thesis, Riew began developing a musical inspired by the Korean folktale Shimcheong and her own experiences with Korean-American identity.^[9][10] In January 2022 she shared some of her music on TikTok, where as of August 2024 she had a following of 135,000 users and 3.5 million likes.^[1][6] Shimcheong: A Folktale was later renamed to Dive. Riew put on her thesis in February and March 2022 on Harvard's campus.^[6] In February 2023 Riew performed several of her songs as part of Playbill's Songwriter Series.^[11]

In April 2023 ART announced they would further develop Dive with the help of Riew, Diana Son, and Diane Paulus.^[1][12] Other upcoming projects include her musical ENDLESS (dir. by Zi Alikhan, premiering in Korea), her YA fantasy novel The Last Tiger (co-written with brother Brad Riew, publishing with Penguin Random House in Aug 2025), and her Middle Grade fantasy novel Shimcheong (publishing with Harper Collins summer 2026).^[13]

Awards

• 2022 Fred Ebb Award^[14]