Education
M.A., Boston University, Creative Writing, 1975
B.A., Cornell University, English, 1974
Biography
Julie Kane holds a B.A. from Cornell University, an M.A. from Boston University, and a Ph.D. from Louisiana State University. Her five books and two chapbooks of poems include Rhythm &Booze (2003), winner of the National Poetry Series; Jazz Funeral (2009), winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize; and Mothers of Ireland (2020), winner of the Poetry by the Sea Book Award. Forthcoming in Spring 2025 will be Naked Ladies: New and Selected Poems. With Grace Bauer, Julie co-edited Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse (2017), and with H. L. Hix she co-edited Terribly in Love, poems in English translation by the Lithuanian poet Tautvyda Marcinkeviciūtė (2018). Additionally, the literary nonfiction memoir that Julie co-authored with Kiem Do (Counterpart: A South Vietnamese Naval Officer’s War) became a History Book Club Featured Alternate Selection. Her poems appear in numerous journals including Barrow Street,Birmingham Poetry Review, Cherry Tree, Green Mountains Review, The Hopkins Review, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, The Southern Review, The Southwest Review, and The Writer’s Almanac and in over sixty anthologies and textbooks including Best American Poetry 2016 and The Book of Irish American Poets from the Eighteenth Century to the Present. Additional honors for her poems include an Academy of American Poets Prize, a Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Poetry Prize, and first prize in the Open Poetry International Sonnet Competition. She has also contributed essays on poetry and literature to publications including The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop,The Facts on File Companion to British Poetry, and The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Her poems have been set to music by composers Libby Larsen, Kenneth Olson, and Dale Trumbore. Julie is Professor Emerita at Northwestern State University of Louisiana, where she received the Excellence in Teaching Award, the Mildred Hart Bailey Faculty Research Award, and the Dr. Jean D’Amato-Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award. She is also a former Louisiana Poet Laureate, Fulbright Scholar to Lithuania, George Bennett Fellow in Writing at Phillips Exeter Academy, New Orleans Writer in Residence at Tulane University, Poets’ Prize Committee Chair, and juror for the National Book Award in Poetry.
How did you discover Western?
I first learned of the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program at Western, in which I now teach, at the West Chester Conference on Form and Narrative in Poetry.
What are some of the highlights of your career?
Serving as Louisiana Poet Laureate from 2011-2013. Winning the National Poetry Series, judged by Maxine Kumin. Winning the Donald Justice Poetry Prize, judged by David Mason. Receiving a Fulbright Scholarship in Creative Writing/American Studies (Poetry) to lecture at Vilnius Pedagogical University in Lithuania in 2002. Reading my poem which won the 2008 Open Poetry International Sonnet Competition at the awards ceremony at Cambridge University in England. At the university from which I retired prior to joining the faculty of Western, receiving the Excellence in Teaching Award, the Mildred Hart Bailey Faculty Research Award and the Dr. Jean D’Amato-Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award, and having a Chair position named for me in my former department.
What most excites you about your field?
Poetry has sparked my interest since I was a small child, and I am fortunate to have a career that revolves around reading, teaching, writing and performing it.
What is your favorite thing about the Gunnison Valley?
Hiking in Crested Butte at the peak of wildflower season.
