Goddard MFA alumna Julia Bouwsma‘s Midden, her second book of poems, was selected by Afaa Michael Weaver, for the Poets Out Loud Prize.  Midden will be published by Fordham University Press in Fall 2018.
In Midden, Bouwsma writes about the forcible eviction of an interracial community that until 1912 live on a small island off the coast of Maine when the state forcibly evicted them, displacing eight of the forty islanders to the Maine School for the Feeble Minded.
Bouwsma’s debut collection, Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017), was selected by Linda Pastan for the 2015 Cider Press Review Book Award. Her poems and reviews can be found in Bellingham Review, Colorado Review, Cutthroat, Muzzle, Puerto del Sol, RHINO, River Styx, Salamander, and others. A former Managing Editor for Alice James Books, she currently serves as Book Review Editor for Connotation Press: An Online Artifact and as Library Director for Webster Library in Kingfield, Maine. She lives and works on an off-the-grid farm in the mountains of western Maine.  She was the Goddard MFA Program‘s Visiting Alum in January, 2017.