Also a massage therapist and teacher, Ottawa Valley-raised Julie Paul, from Lanark, moved to Victoria and published her first collection of fiction, The Jealousy Bone, in 2008. Her second collection of twelve unsettling stories, The Pull of the Moon (Brindle & Glass 2014), received the twelfth $5,000 City of Victoria Butler Prize, presented by City of Victoria acting mayor Chris Coleman and sponsor Brian Butler. "I'm so grateful, I'm pinching myself," she said. As her characters struggle for belonging, connection, love and forgiveness, Paul examines the world with a poet's eyes focussing on relationships between lovers, families, friends, and the cost of secrets kept and then revealed. The title was selected as a Top 100 Book of 2014 by the Globe & Mail.

Paul's stories, poems and essays have been accepted for publication in numerous journals, including The Danforth Review, Little Fiction, The New Quarterly, The Malahat Review, Event, The Fiddlehead, The Dalhousie Review, PRISM International, Qwerty, Geist, Vallum, existere, The Rusty Toque, Boulevard, Canadian Living, and in the anthologies Coming Attractions 07 and Women Behaving Badly.

Her first poetry collection is The Rules of the Kingdom (McGill-Queens 2017) as part of the Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series.

In 2019, Paul published a book of short stories, Meteorites (Brindle & Glass $22).

BOOKS:

The Jealousy Bone (Emdash Publishing 2008). $19.95 978-0-9780182-4-5
The Pull of the Moon (Brindle & Glass 2014) $19.95 9781927366325
The Rules of the Kingdom (McGill-Queens 2017) $16.95 9780773548992
Meteorites (Brindle & Glass 2019) $22 978-1-92736-682-0

[BCBW 2019]