In 1896, at age 16, Julia Mood graduated from Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina; she earned her master's degree there a year later.

She taught at the public school in Fort Motte, South Carolina for a few years, then married William George Peterkin in 1903.

For example, she wrote to authors Carl Sandburg and H. L. Mencken, and included samples of her writing about the Gullah culture of coastal South Carolina.

Sandburg, who lived within a day's travel in Flat Rock, North Carolina, made a visit.

Dr. Richard S. Burton, the chairperson of Pulitzer's fiction-literature jury, recommended that the first prize go to the novel Victim and Victor by John Rathbone Oliver.

The public library in the small town of Gaffney, South Carolina classified it as obscene and banned it.

[citation needed] Peterkin performed as an actress, playing the main character in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler at the Town Theatre in Columbia, South Carolina, beginning in February 1932.

Hurston wrote that she had met Peterkin and began a correspondence,[citation needed], but no letters between them have been found.