Julien Strong is the author of two poetry collections, Tour of the Breath Gallery, winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize (Texas Tech, 2013), and The Mouth of Earth (University of Nevada, forthcoming 2020), and two novels, The Fainting Room (Ig, 2013) and Burning the Sea (Alyson, 2002). Their poems have appeared in many journals, including The Nation, The Southern Review, Southwest Review, Poetry Daily, Rattle, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and The Sun. They are the recipient of a Connecticut Artist Fellowship Award, a Promise Award from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, the Elizabeth Matchett Stover Award from Southwest Review,and their work has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Julien has taught creative writing at Connecticut College and the University of Hartford, and is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Central Connecticut State University.