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 out now. She has received fellowship support from the James A. Michener Center, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, The Corsicana Artist and Writer Residency, and Yaddo. With grant support from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, she wrote 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. She was a 2023 National Fellow at USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, focusing on the landscape of health care in Texas. In 2025, she was selected as a Writing Freedom Fellow. Her writing has appeared in Texas Monthly, the Texas Observer, Scalawag, The Baffler, Bon Appétit, Slate, and The Nation. She teaches creative writing at Saint Edward’s University and is currently working on a memoir.