Julia Copus

Julia Copus was born in London and now lives in Somerset. She has won First Prize in the National Poetry Competition and the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem of the Year (2010). In 2018 she was appointed a RSL fellow.

The Shuttered Eye (Bloodaxe, 1995) was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First collection and a second collection, In Defence of Adultery, appeared in 2003. A sequence of poems for radio, Ghost Lines, was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in December 2011 and shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. Her third collection of poetry, The World's Two Smallest Humans (Faber, 2012), was shortlisted for both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Costa Poetry Award. All three of her collections are Poetry Book Society Recommendations. Julia’s fourth collection of poetry, Girlhood, was published by Faber in 2019.

As well as poetry, Julia has written radio plays (including Eenie, Meenie, Macka Racka winner of the BBC’s Alfred Bradley Award for best new radio playwright) and a popular writing style guide, Brilliant Writing Tips for Students. Her first children’s picture book, Hog in the Fog, was published by Faber in 2014. The second instalment, The Hog, The Shrew and the Hullabaloo followed in 2015. The third book in the series, The Shrew that Flew, was published in April 2016. She is also working on a biography of the poet Charlotte Mew for publication in 2018.

Julia is an Advisory Fellow for the Royal Literary Fund, and in 2008 was made an Honorary Fellow of the University of Exeter. She has served on the judging panel for a number of literary prizes, including The Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Ted Hughes Award, and the Costa Book Award.

Julia edited a collection of Charlotte Mew’s poems for Faber in 2019. Her biography of the late British poet, titled This Rare Spirit, was published by Faber in April 2021.