Julia Armfield

Author

Julia Armfield is a British author whose fiction and short stories explore love, loss, and transformation with a distinctive blend of literary realism, gothic atmosphere, and quiet strangeness. Her work has been compared to Carmen Maria Machado and Shirley Jackson for its ability to use the uncanny to illuminate the emotional truths of... ordinary life. Armfield studied English Literature at University College London and holds an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. She lives in London. Salt Slow (2019) was her debut short story collection — nine stories exploring desire, embodiment, and transformation, with women turning into wolves, cities flooding, and the mundane becoming strange. The collection won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. Our Wives Under the Sea (2022) was her debut novel — the story of Leah, whose wife Miri returns from a deep-sea research expedition subtly and disturbingly changed. The novel is at once a love story about a marriage under strain, a body horror about transformation, and a meditation on grief and the impossibility of truly knowing another person. It was widely praised for its emotional precision and its restrained, devastating power. Private Rites (2024) continued her exploration of strange, atmospheric fiction with a family drama set against an unending rain. Armfield writes with a poet's attention to language and a horror writer's understanding of the uncanny. Her prose is beautiful and precise, and her stories find the extraordinary lurking within the most intimate domestic moments. The audiobook editions of Armfield's works are atmospheric and compelling, with narrators capturing the quiet strangeness and emotional depth of her storytelling. Her books and audiobooks are essential for readers who love literary fiction that is smart, strange, and emotionally devastating. Read more Show less