Julie E. Bloemeke’s (she/her/hers) first full-length collection of poetry, Slide to Unlock, debuted with Sibling Rivalry Press in March 2020. In 2021, Slide to Unlock was chosen as one of two full-length poetry collections statewide as a Book All Georgians Should Read. Slide to Unlock was also chosen as the Finalist in Poetry for the 57th Georgia Author of the Year Award. Chosen by Stephen Dunn as finalist for the 2016 May Swenson Poetry Award through University Press of Colorado and Utah State University Press, Slide to Unlock was also a semifinalist in numerous book prizes including the Crab Orchard Review First Book Award and the Crab Orchard Review Poetry Open Competition with Southern Illinois University Press; the Washington Prize through Word Works; and the Hudson Prize through Black Lawrence Press. A fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Bloemeke earned her MA in American Literature from the
University of South Carolina–where she was a Ramsaur Fellow–and her MFA in poetry from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary magazines including Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast, Cortland Review, Nimrod, Pine Hills Review, Crab Orchard Review, Muse/A Journal, Chautauqua Literary Journal, Poet Lore, and others. Her poems have been published in a number of anthologies including Mother Mary Comes to Me: A Popculture Poetry Anthology, The Pandemic Poetry Anthology, A Constellation of Kisses, Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse, The Great Gatsby Anthology, The Sense of the Midlands, The Nancy Drew Anthology, The Southern Poetry Anthology Volume V: Georgia and the My Cruel Invention Anthology, among others.
Her ekphrastic poem "Fight Between a Tiger and a Buffalo, 1908" won the 2022 Third Coast Poetry Prize; "After Rousseau's 'The Dream,' Museum of Modern Art, 2016," was a finalist for the 2020 Fischer Poetry Prize through the Telluride Institute. One of her telephone-based poems from Slide to Unlock, "You're Breaking Up," was nominated for Best of the Net in 2020 by Pine Hills Review. Her poems "Glass City" and "Observations from the Base" have also been chosen as poem-of-the-day selections for Verse Daily.
She was the first place prize recipient in poetry competitions for both the Atlanta Writer’s Club and the Emory Poetry Council at Emory University and has been a finalist for the Arts & Letters Poetry Prize. She was also a finalist for the Saluda River Poetry Prize for the State of South Carolina. Her poem, “Electric Mail” was a finalist in the William Faulkner Wisdom Competition; she was also a winner in the Artists Embassy International Dancing Poetry contest where she read her poem, “Pinned,” as part of the annual performance in San Francisco.
Her ekphrastic work on Philip C. Curtis was selected for a limited edition chapbook anthology collaboration between the Phoenix Museum of Art and Four Chambers Press; she also won the 2015 ekphrastic poetry competition at the Toledo Museum of Art where her work was on view with the Claude Monet collection. Her poetry and photography series on abandoned buildings in the Atlanta suburbs was featured in Deep South Magazine.
In addition to serving as a literary docent with the Toledo Museum of Art, she was the inaugural Poetry Director for the Milton Literary Festival in Georgia in 2016. She was also the 2020 judge for the Robert V. Morea III Poetry Prize through Georgia State University, the 2021 judge for the Bryon Herbert Reece International Poetry Award, and the 2022 Moon and Chickens Poetry Award through the Georgia Poetry Society.
She is currently an Associate Editor for South Carolina Review and co-edited a tribute issue of Limp Wrist for Dolly Parton's 75th birthday in January 2021. Along with Dustin Brookshire, she is the co-editor of Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology, which debuts with Madville Publishing on Dolly's 77th birthday, January 19, 2023.
A freelance writer, editor, and guest lecturer, her interviews have recently appeared in The AWP Writer’s Chronicle and Poetry International. Her essay "12/12/12" was also featured in the December 2020 issue of Ecotheo Review. She has also been a guest blogger at Best American Poetry where she wrote about technology poetry and her studies with James Dickey.
As a teacher of online poetry workshops, she has worked with such organizations as The Hudson Valley Writer's Workshop, Reading Queer, The Wild and Precious Life Poetry Series, and The Ranch in Tiburon, California. Please visit the Workshops tab on this site for more information or to apply for upcoming sessions.
She is a proud native of Toledo, Ohio.