A native of Boston and a longtime resident of Louisiana, Julie Kane was the 2011-2013 Louisiana Poet Laureate. She is Professor Emeritus of English at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana, where she has received the Excellence in Teaching Award, the Muriel Hart Bailey Research Award, and the Jean D'Amato Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award. Currently she is teaching in the low-residency MFA program of Western State Colorado University. She has been the George Bennett Fellow in Writing at Phillips Exeter Academy, the New Orleans Writer in Residence at Tulane University, a faculty member of the West Chester Conference on Form and Narrative in Poetry, and a Fulbright Scholar to Vilnius Pedagogical University (Lithuania). Julie is the author of five poetry books and two chapbooks: Mothers of Ireland, co-winner of the Poetry by the Sea Book Prize; Paper Bullets (2014); Jazz Funeral (2009, 2021), winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize; Rhythm & Booze (2003), Maxine Kumin's choice for the National Poetry Series; The Bartender Poems (1991, chapbook); Body and Soul (1987); and Two Into One (1982, chapbook). She is also the co-editor, with Grace Bauer, of the anthologies Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse (2017) and Umpteen Ways of Looking at a Possum: Critical and Creative Responses to Everette Maddox (2006), which was a finalist for the 2007 Southern Independent Booksellers Association book award in poetry. Julie served as the associate editor for 20th-century poetry of the Longman anthology of Southern Literature, Voices of the American South (2005). She also wrote the historical introductions for the Annie Finch/Marie-Elizabeth Mali anthology, Villanelles (2012) and for Contemporary Lithuanian Poetry: A Baltic Anthology, Book 2 (2013). With Kiem Do, she co-authored the memoir Counterpart: A Vietnamese Naval Officer's War (1998), which was a History Book Club Featured Alternate. She also wrote the libretto for Starship Paradise, a one-act opera with music by Dale Trumbore that was premiered by Center City Opera Company of Philadelphia in 2013, and the libretto for "City of Lights" by composer Kenneth Olson, premiered by the Natchitoches/Northwestern Symphony in 2014. Other poems were set to music by composer Libby Larsen and recorded on CDs by The American Boychoir and by mezzo soprano Susanne Mentzer. In 2005, she was a juror for the National Book Award in Poetry. Julie's poems have appeared in journals such as The Antioch Review, Barrow Street, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, and The Southern Review, and in over sixty anthologies including the Norton Seagull Reader, the Penguin Pocket Poetry, The Book of Irish American Poets from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, and Best American Poetry 2016. They have also been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writer's Almanac. Her essays and book reviews can be found in Twentieth Century Literature, Literature/Film Quarterly, Modern Language Quarterly, Southern Literary Journal, Journal of Consciousness Studies, The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, and other publications. She is a Contributing Editor to Light: A Journal of Light Verse Since 1992 and a past Chair of the Poets' Prize Committee. 

Website: http://www.juliekanepoet.com

Twitter Username: @juliekanepoet

Publications

• Mothers of Ireland (book) , LSU Press (2020)
• Jazz Funeral (book) , Red Hen Press (2nd edn.) (2021)
• Paper Bullets (book) , White Violet Press (2014)
• Rhythm & Booze (book) , University of Illinois Press (2003)
• Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse , Lost Horse Press (2017)
• Body and Soul (book) , Pirogue Press (1987)
• Umpteen Ways of Looking at a Possum (anthology) , Xavier Review Press (2006)
• Counterpart: A South Vietnamese Naval Officer's War (co-author, with Kiem Do: literary nonfiction) , Naval Institute Press (1998)
• The Bartender Poems (chapbook) , Greville Press (1991)

Awards

• Louisiana Poet Laureate(2011)
• Donald Justice Poetry Prize(2009)
• First Prize, Open Poetry International Sonnet Competition(2008)
• Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Poetry Award(2007)
• National Poetry Series selection(2002)
• Fulbright Scholarship in Creative Writing/American Studies(2002)
• Academy of American Poets Prize(1993)
• George Bennett Fellowship in Writing, Phillips Exeter Academy(1974)
• Mademoiselle Magazine College Poetry Prize(1973)

Employment

• Professor of English at Northwestern State University of Louisiana (August 1999 - July 2016)
• Professor Emeritus of English at Northwestern State University of Louisiana (August 2016 - )
• Poetry Faculty, Low-Residency MFA Program at Western State Colorado University (January 2018 - )

Degrees

• Bachelor of Arts in English from Cornell University (June 1974)
• Master of Arts in Creative Writing: Poetry from Boston University (May 1975)
• Doctoral Degree in English: Poetry and Poetics from Louisiana State University (May 1999)

Genres of Interest

Creative nonfiction, Poetry