Julie Gard enjoys living in an atmospheric old house, except for rotting storm windows and other eternal repairs. She loves her backyard full of berries though not when picking bucket #11. While she used to live for dangerous world travel, she is now a committed homebody, albeit one who envisions spending the occasional night on the other end of town in a canned ham trailer.
When not pondering the metaphorical possibilities of the smallest fragment of fern visible to the human eye, Julie teaches writing at the University of Wisconsin-Superior. She has a B.A. in English from Grinnell College, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota, and a certificate proving she survived a year in Vladivostok, Russia as a Fulbright Graduate Fellow.Julie's most recent prose poetry collection, I Think I Know You (FutureCycle Press), was a finalist for the 2023 INDIES Book of the Year Award. Her first book of prose poems, Home Studies, won the Many Voices Project Prize from New Rivers Press and was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award. Additional collections include Scrap: On Louise Nevelson from Ravenna Press and two chapbooks, Obscura: The Daguerreotype Series (Finishing Line Press) and Russia in 17 Objects (Tiger's Eye Press). Julie also publishes essays, short stories, and hybrid work in a range of journals and anthologies.
Her interest in the brief essay form has been developing and intensifying. It's like stretching out a prose poem just so, similar to taffy at the Jersey shore. (Wait a few seconds for the gratifying taffy-stretching GIF.)
Julie lives a block from Lake Superior in Duluth, Minnesota with her partner, the poet Michelle Matthees, and their pet and plant menagerie.