Julia Armfield

Julia Armfield is an English author. She has published a collection of short stories, Salt Slow (2019), and two novels, Our Wives Under the Sea (2022), and Private Rites (2024).

Work
In an interview with Sam Manzella of Them, Armfield said that her debut novel was in part inspired by a wish to explore the "crossover with queer women’s fiction and the sea," adding that the ocean is often used to symbolise both "something forbidden" and something that "can be many things at once." In an interview with Sam Franzini of Our Culture Mag, she stated that the novel was in part "about an anticipation of grief and losing someone," adding that part of the horror was from "the clanging bureaucracy of not being able to get an answer."

Our Wives Under the Sea was nominated for the Foyles Fiction Book of the Year Award and Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, winning the Polari Prize in 2023.