About Julie

Julie Choffel is a poet and educator.  Her most recent book, Dear Wallace, won the Backwaters Prize in Poetry, and is forthcoming in 2024 from The Backwaters Press, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press.

She is also the author of The Hello Delay (Fordham University Press), selected by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge for the Poets Out Loud prize, as well as a handful of chapbooks: The Inevitable Return of What We Do Not Love (Finishing Line Press), The Chicories (Ethel Press), and Figures In a Surplus (Achiote Press). Her poems have appeared in many journals, including Tupelo Quarterly, ORION, Conduit, New American Writing, Posit, Denver Quarterly, and the tiny. 

Born and raised in Austin, Texas, before moving to Massachusetts, California, and Connecticut, Julie studied geography at Texas State University and later graduated from the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at UMass Amherst. She has worked as a floral designer, a telephone surveyor, a sandwich artist, a farm intern, a ropes course facilitator, a backpacking guide, an environmental educator, a travel planner, a writing tutor, and an English professor.

From 2017 to 2020, she served as the Poet Laureate of West Hartford, Connecticut, where she continues to curate readings and literary events for the Greater Hartford area. Julie teaches creative writing as an Assistant Professor at the University of Connecticut, and lives near Hartford with her partner and their three children.