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Julie Koh (birthdate) is a fiction writer based in Sydney, Australia. Her short stories have appeared in Best Australian Stories, The Lifted Brow, the Australian, Sleepers Almanac, Fish Anthology and Fixi Novo's HEAT . Short films inspired by her stories have screened at the St Kilda Film Festival, the Good Dog! International Film Festival and the Palm Springs International ShortFest. Capital Misfits, a capsule collection of short stories, was published by Spineless Wonders in 2015. Her debut full-length collection of short stories, Portable Curiosities, was published by UQP in 2016.

Life
Koh was born to Chinese-Malaysian parents and grew up in the Sydney suburb of Concord West. After completing a double degree in politics and law, Koh was pursuing a career in corporate law, specialising in intellectual property, when she made the decision to quit and pursue a career in fiction writing instead.

Fiction writing
Taking up a job as a lollipop lady, Koh started writing short stories between stints of guiding school children across the road.

While she was making the transition from law to fiction, Koh underwent an online Continuing Education creative writing course with the University of East Anglia under the tutelage of author Dr Stephen Carver. It was there that she discovered her writing style lent itself to magic realism.

"The surreal and the absurd are appealing because they help me describe the craziness of the world we live in. I also like a good laugh."

Koh's first published story Colin the Dog's Fabulous Midnight Adventure and Another Story was adapted into a film produced by Staple Fiction and directed by Grant Scicluna.

In 2016, Koh published Portable Curiosities — a collection of surreal, satirical short stories examining issues like misogyny, racism, corporate life and consumerism.

Cultural critic Doug Wallen wrote of Portable Curiosities: "[It] is a collection of whip-smart satirical tales that are as painfully funny as they are uncomfortably timely". The collection was called a "stellar addition to a new wave of Australian satire" by writer and editor Alan Vaarwerk, signalling Koh's induction into a growing school of Australian satirical writing.

In 2016, Koh also edited a new annual short story anthology for Singaporean small press publisher called BooksActually's Gold Standard, which featured stories by the best cult writers from Asia and the diaspora.

Koh is currently in the process of writing a short, absurdist novel.

Koh derives inspiration from a multitude of fiction writers — from Australian writers such as Eric Yoshiaki Dando and Tom Cho to international writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Italo Calvino, Donald Barthelme and Haruki Murakami.

Published works
If any, list the works organized by date of publication. See Charles Darwin for example.

Honours, decorations, awards and distinctions
(If any)