© Julia Rampen
Julia Rampen was born in Edinburgh to a British mother and a Canadian father, meaning that family holidays were either spent in rural Ontario, or at her maternal grandparents’ home near Morecambe Bay. They were also filled with her grandparents’ stories, which ranged from a farm childhood to her paternal grandfather’s exile from Indonesia at just age ten.
Growing up at a time when newspaper sales were in freefall, she was warned not to become a journalist, but became a financial reporter shortly after the 2008 crash, and eventually moved on to join The Mirror, The New Statesman, and most recently The Liverpool Echo. She travelled to Syria in 2010, and later co-founded the Syrian storytelling project Qisetna, which in turn led her to report on displaced people in Europe. In February 2021, she joined the communications charity IMIX with a focus on asylum and refugees.
Julia is the recipient of fourth annual NorthBound Book Award as part of the 2022 Northern Writers Awards, for her debut novel The Bay. The Bay will be published by Saraband Books in 2023.
Growing up at a time when newspaper sales were in freefall, she was warned not to become a journalist, but became a financial reporter shortly after the 2008 crash, and eventually moved on to join The Mirror, The New Statesman, and most recently The Liverpool Echo. She travelled to Syria in 2010, and later co-founded the Syrian storytelling project Qisetna, which in turn led her to report on displaced people in Europe. In February 2021, she joined the communications charity IMIX with a focus on asylum and refugees.
Julia is the recipient of fourth annual NorthBound Book Award as part of the 2022 Northern Writers Awards, for her debut novel The Bay. The Bay will be published by Saraband Books in 2023.