Our Wives Under the Sea
Award History
| Award | Year | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Polari Prize | 2024 | Shortlist |
| Lambda Literary Award for FictionLesbian Fiction | 2023 | Shortlist |
| Polari Prize | 2023 | Winner |
| Polari Prize | 2022 | Shortlist |
| Polari Prize | 2021 | Shortlist |
| Polari Prize | 2020 | Shortlist |
| Polari Prize | 2019 | Shortlist |
About This Book
Julia Armfield's debut novel alternates between Miri, waiting at home for her wife Leila to return from a deep-sea research expedition, and Leila's account of what happened on the ocean floor. A slow-burn of body horror, grief, and love, the novel uses the abyssal sea as a metaphor for loss, trauma, and the impossibility of fully knowing another person. It won the Polari Prize for Book of the Year in 2023 and the Ferro-Grumley Award.
About the Author
Julia Armfield is a British novelist and short story writer born in 1991 in London. She studied English at Manchester and has worked as an editor and arts writer. Her debut story collection salt slow (2019) was shortlisted for the White Review Short Story Prize and was widely acclaimed for its feminist body horror and mythological imagination. Read more →
