Lesbian, Poet . . . and Executive Fundraiser!

Julie R. Enszer is a poet, writer, lesbian activist, and executive fundraiser. She lives in Maryland and works as the Executive Director of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, an organization led by Dr. Helen Caldicott.

In 1990, Julie completed a BA in Women’s Studies and English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan. Subsequently, she gained 15 years of development and marketing experience, with responsibility for multi-million-dollar budgets and projects for the Human Rights Campaign, MillionforMarriage.org, Gill Foundation, and Affirmations Lesbian/Gay Community Center.

Julie's poems have been published in Iris: A Journal About Women, Room of One’s Own, Long Shot, the Web Del Sol Review, and Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly. She has completed a full-length poetry manuscript, Limnings, and a chapbook, Mottled Midrash. Her favorite poets are Marilyn Hacker, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Mary Oliver. Julie studied poetry at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the Writer's Center in Bethesda.

Other writing projects include blogging through the 613 mitzvot and writing a novel, We Three Kings. Julie would like to write a book as beautiful as Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams, S/he by Minnie Bruce Pratt, or Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons by Marilyn Hacker.

Describing Limnings
There are poems that excite me because of their style. There are poems that excite me because of their subject. Then there are the poems in Julie R. Enszer's book, Limnings, exciting in both style and subject. Limnings reminds me of the drawings of Albrecht Druer: finely rendered portraits that glow with life. And what a juicy life! Julie, as she describes herself in Limnings (to limn means to describe or to depict by painting or drawing), seems to have lived and accepted her lesbianism from an early age. Julie's poems are studies of women, women's relationships with women, and women's relationships with the world. The lines "I'm still buying dozens / Of poetry books by women" capture so much about Julie's open, curious, questioning, passionate mind. There is so much to learn and enjoy in Limnings, including thrilling formal innovations in poems like "Making Peach Pie." Julie likes fruit. Need I say more?

~Mary