Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach emigrated as a Jewish refugee from Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine when she was six years old. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Oregon and is a Ph.D. student in the University of Pennsylvania’s Comparative Literature and Literary Theory program where she focuses on the lyric rendering of trauma in contemporary American poetry related to the Holocaust. Her poetry has appeared in Missouri Review, Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly, and Southern Humanities Review, among others. She has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf and TENT Writers’ Conferences as well as the Auschwitz Jewish Center, and won the 2016, 2015, and 2014 William Carlos Williams prizes from the Academy of American Poets. Julia is the author of The Bear Who Ate the Stars, winner of Split Lip Magazine‘s 2014 Uppercut Chapbook Award. She is also the Editor-in-Chief of Construction Magazine. Visit her wordpress to reach her or read her failed blogging attempts.