Julia Zarankin

Julia Zarankin is a writer, birder, (occasional) birdsplainer, lecturer, and culture-tour-leader based in Toronto. Her writing has appeared in The Walrus, Hazlitt, The Letters Page, Cottage Life, Orion Magazine, Threepenny Review, Prism International, Antioch Review, Birding Magazine, Maisonneuve, The New Quarterly, Ontario Nature and The Globe and Mail. She was shortlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize (2020), won the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival nonfiction prize and has been first runner-up for PRISM International’s nonfiction prize, a finalist for the TNQ Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest and twice long-listed for the CBC Nonfiction Prize. Julia’s birding/life aspirations: “To sport the hairdo of a Cedar Waxwing, acquire the wardrobe of a Northern Flicker and develop the confidence of a Ross’s Goose.”

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