Julie Koh (許瑩玲) was born in Sydney to Chinese-Malaysian parents. She studied politics and law at the University of Sydney, then quit a career in corporate law to pursue writing. She is the author of two short-story collections: Capital Misfits (2015) and Portable Curiosities (UQP, 2016). The latter was shortlisted for the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction 2016, the Queensland Literary Awards – Australian Short Story Collection – Steele Rudd Award 2016, the UTS Glenda Adams Award in the 2017 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, and the Australian Science Fiction Foundation’s 2018 Norma K Hemming Award (Long Work). Portable Curiosities was one of the Guardian’s Best Australian Books of 2016, an Australian Book Review 2016 and 2017 Book of the Year, a Sydney Morning Herald Daily Life feminist reading pick of 2016, a Feminist Writers Festival Best Feminist Book of 2016, and an ABC Radio National 2017 Best Summer Read. Julie was named a 2017 Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist for Portable Curiosities.
Julie’s short stories have appeared widely, including in the Best Australian Stories (in 2014 to 2017) and Best Australian Comedy Writing. Outside Australia, her fiction has been published in eight countries and translated into Chinese, Indonesian and Bengali. She co-founded the experimental literary collective Kanganoulipo and has written radio plays for ABC Radio National and the libretto for the opera Chop Chef. She has also contributed to Samuel Johnson’s fundraising anthologies Dear Santa, Dear Dad, Dear Mum and Dear Lover. Short films based on her stories have screened at the St Kilda Film Festival, the Good Dog! International Film Festival and the Palm Springs International ShortFest.
Julie has represented Australian literature at Parliament House, as well as internationally at the invitation of the Australian Embassy in Beijing and the Australian Consulate-General, Chennai. She has judged twelve literary prizes, including the 2018 Stella Prize and the University of Southern Queensland Steele Rudd Award in 2022 and 2023. Julie has been a peer assessor for Creative Australia and a reader for the Oxbelly Fiction Writers program. She is the current Fiction Editor for Westerly.
