"When I’m writing, the books I read need to perform a variety of functions, from helping me think about tone, place and voice, to teaching me hitherto unsuspected facts about fish. My reading, mid-project, becomes discordant - voices shouting over one another and frequently interrupting. I find I start to jump about, rereading passages from books I know well to kick-start myself, returning to writers I envy and writing I admire.

These are the books that kept me company while I was writing Our Wives Under the Sea - the books that made me think different ways about loneliness, discovery and grief, that opened up the way I see sci-fi and allowed me to fashion a queer narrative based in a very particular landscape." Julia Armfield, February 2022