Julia Copus was born in London in 1969, grew up in Hampshire and now lives in Somerset. She has published two collections with Bloodaxe, The Shuttered Eye (1995), which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and In Defence of Adultery (2003) – both of these Poetry Book Society Recommendations.

She has received many awards for her poetry, including an Eric Gregory Award, an Arts Council of England Writer’s Award, a Hawthornden Fellowship, and a BBC/Gulbenkian Foundation writer’s bursary. She won first prize in the National Poetry Competition in 2003 with ‘Breaking the Rule’, and won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2010 with 'An Easy Passage'. Her radio plays include Eenie Meenie Macka Racka (2003), winner of the BBC’s prestigious Alfred Bradley Award, and The Enormous Radio (2008). She tutors regularly for the Arvon Foundation and The Poetry School and is an Advisory Fellow for the Royal Literary Fund and an Honorary Fellow at the University of Exeter.