Julie Poole was born in Seattle, Washington, and raised in the Pacific Northwest. She received a BA from Columbia University and an MFA in poetry from The New Writers Project at The University of Texas at Austin where she was a finalist for the Keene Prize for Literature. Her first book of poems, Bright Specimen, was inspired by the Billie L. Turner Plant Resources Center at UT and was published by Deep Vellum in 2021. In 2022, Bright Specimen was a finalist for the Writers’ League of Texas Book Award. Her second book, Gorgeous Freak, is forthcoming June 11, 2024. She has received fellowship support from the James A. Michener Center, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, The Corsicana Artist and Writer Residency, and Yaddo. Her poems and personal essays have appeared Denver Quarterly, Poet Lore, Cold Mountain Review, Porter House Review, HuffPost, The Baffler, and elsewhere. Her journalism has been published in The Texas Observer, Texas Monthly, Scalawag, Bon Appétit, and The Nation. She received support from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project to write about unpaid caregiving for Yes! Magazine, a piece that was anthologized in Going For Broke: Living on the Edge in the World’s Richest Country in 2023. She is a National Fellow at USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, focusing on the landscape of healthcare in Texas. She lives in Austin.