Julia Cottrelle

Julia Cottrelle lives and writes in Toronto with the company of her Corgi, Audrey Ray. Her work has appeared in The Fiddlehead, Room Magazine, subTerrain, and the Emerging Writers’ Reader Series. Julia served on the editorial board of The Fiddlehead and PRISM international, and studied creative writing at Simon Fraser University as well as Guelph-Humber with Colin McAdam. Her work is informed by graduate studies in psychiatry at Cardiff University.

Writers & Books

Award History

2026 - Finalist

RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers

Jury Citation

“Just as a bumblebee seems to defy the laws of physics every time it takes flight, so too does Julia Cottrelle’s quietly devastating story ‘The Old Turtle Climb’ carry such emotional and thematic weight as to risk failure, which is the mark of true artistry. Through assured and coolly intelligent prose, Cottrelle explores a mother’s raw grief at the loss of stillborn baby, intertwined with images of animal birth and death that are at turns clinical, heartbreaking, and bleakly funny — and often all at once. This is a haunting and authentic depiction of a wounded soul attempting to live through a deep hurt.”—2026 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers Short Fiction Jury (Jamaluddin Aram, Jen Neale, Nathan Whitlock)