Julia Zarankin

Julia Zarankin lives, writes, and birds in Toronto. Her memoir, Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder, was a Canadian bestseller and her short story, “Black-legged Kittiwake” was a finalist for the CBC Short Story Prize. Julia’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Walrus, Maisonneuve, Canadian Geographic, The New Quarterly, Audubon, Orion, and The Globe and Mail. In 2022-2023, Julia was a Translation Fellow at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, MA and translated Shifra Lipshitz’ memoir, Dreams and Reality, from Yiddish into English. When she isn’t chained to her desk or scoping for shorebirds at a sewage lagoon, Julia also leads culture tours to such places as Georgia and Uzbekistan with Worldwide Quest.

Julia is a Short Form 2009 and Short Form 2012 mentee and worked with Shyam Selvadurai and Olive Senior.

Photo credit: Claire Sibonney