Julia Bainbridge is an editor who has worked at Condé Nast Traveler, Bon Appétit, Yahoo Food, and Atlanta magazine, and a James Beard Award-nominated writer whose stories have been published in Food & Wine, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Playboy, among others. Her profile of chef Iliana Regan was named one of Longreads Best of 2019: Food Writing, and Saveur magazine named an essay of hers one of the ten best food stories of 2016. She judged both the 2019 and 2020 Art of Eating Prize, serves on the International Association of Culinary Professionals Awards Advisory Committee, and was the first-ever writer in residence at industry leader Food52.

After building a career around why and how people gather, Bainbridge pivoted into why people don't, launching The Lonely Hour podcast to explore social disconnection and other forms of loneliness. In the three years since, the show has been featured in O, The Oprah Magazine, Psychology Today, Women's Health, Bloomberg, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the BBC, NPR, and more.