Nominated for the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. A Globe and Mail Best Book of 2025. A staff pick at Boulder Bookstore, Carmichael's Bookstore, Flying Books, Parnassus Books, Politics & Prose Bookstore, Thank You Bookshop and Type Books. With biting wit, Aurora Stewart de Peña satirizes the creative industry she’s spent years in. From the people who brought you the invention of advertising comes Julius Julius, a rambling architectural wonder, outpost of the very first ad man of ancient Pompeii, built on the backs of generations of creative survivors who just want to lie on the floor of a conference room and cry about the lumber account without being sexually harassed. Welcome to the world’s oldest advertising agency, where ghosts control the board room AC, an ancient executive assistant runs a cave full of thousand year old billboards, and there are bones in the walls. In a trio of voices from different time periods, we move through the mythical Agency, interrogating the process of stoking desire for a living. We meet the Senior Brand Anthropologist, who’s being surprised by dirty bars of Irish Spring she can’t remember buying, the Creative Director, whose ascent involved an ad campaign starring his dead best friend, and the Account Supervisor, whose only crime is not being a genius. (But the Fisherman Jack Tuna Campaign was her idea, despite what it says on the awards submissions.) Stewart de Peña’s debut novel reveals the cracks in the veneer of the creative industries, and the crisis of consciousness underneath in a novel full of compassion, humour, and blonde sausage dogs. Finalist for the Atwood Gibson Fiction Prize A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year "How do ad campaigns fundamentally affect the way we think—and how do ghosts help grease the wheels of corporate greed? Julius Julius , the quirky, ethereal debut novel by playwright and essayist Aurora Stewart de Peña, seeks to answer those questions in its haunting portrait of an advertising agency built atop a maze of mysterious catacombs. . . . A toothy, tender satire. . . . Two-parts Mad Men to one-part Doctor Strange , this time-travelling paradox of a novel will change the way you see the ads on your morning commute." — The Globe and Mail “Listen to this: ‘Great advertising changes the way we see the world. Great advertising reflects culture, amplifying ideas that move us all forward.’ Julius Julius does exactly this, if for ‘advertising’ we read ‘literature:’ it changes how we see, it moves us forward. Fast-paced, strange, perky, and uncanny as the contemporary world, Stewart de Peña’s novel in individual paragraphs creates a knowing magic realist world, rife with the misogyny and surrealism of late-stage capitalism and its corporations. Yet at the same time, it reads with the irreverent and delightful self-awareness of a smart campaign.” —2025 Atwood Gibson Prize Jury (Gary Barwin, Ali Bryan, and Jasmine Sealy) “The mythic, expansive agency created by Stewart de Peña affords the author a lot of room to play. Julius Julius , as a result, is a singular blend of satire and magical realism inside the most unlikely of vessels: an office workplace novel.” —Elizabeth Polanco, Electric Literature “The rambling, mythic Agency reminded me at times of the enormous bathhouse from Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away , or the infinite labyrinth of Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi , but ultimately could only be the creation of the singular imaginative force that is Aurora Stewart de Peña. A delight.” —Jordan Tannahill, author of The Listeners “ Julius Julius is the kind of satire I love, full of gentle wisdom and refusing to laugh at our expense. With imagination and tenderness, Stewart de Peña finds poetry in a pecuniary world of brand narratives and consumer manipulation, and asks us to forgive ourselves for buying in. This is a strange and beautiful book that wears big questions lightly.” —Martha Schabas, author of My Face in the Light "de Peña is pillar of the D.I.Y. indie performance art community, inspiring and mobilizing with her incisive and audacious projects." —Sook-Yin Lee, director of Paying For It “A finely decorated glimpse into an advertising agency somehow floating outside of time. Stewart de Peña builds a dense, soft carpeted world of corridors that only an insider could give us, where the ad copy is so perspicuous it’s educational. Despite its shadows (or because of them?), I would like to work at Julius Julius.” —Donovan Woods, singer-songwriter “ Julius Julius takes place at an advertising agency with a richly imagined, 2000-year history, housed in a labyrinthine building full of hidden wonders and lost souls. The novel is like that building: both unnerving and delightful, and made up of exquisite details. Aurora Stewart de Peña’s debut is surreal in the way of a lucid dream, where anything could happen but everything makes sense. Throughout it all, the reader is warmly accompanied by