Books

Full Worm Moon
Winner, Woodrow Hall Top Shelf Award
Honorable Mention, Book of the Year Award, Conference on Christianity & Literature
Includes Five Poems Nominated for the Pushcart Prize
“What if the beautiful day is over?” wonders Julie Moore in her shattering new collection. . . . And indeed, poems about the end of a marriage wring the reader. Cycling through a year’s full moons, these poems bear witness to ridicule, violence, and pitilessness. But wait–just as prayer can exorcise broken promises, so too can the natural world’s rising sap and irises mirror and enable human healing.
Anya Silver
Particular Scandals
Particular Scandals a Dayton, Ohio, Must-Read Book of 2014
Broad in scope—theological, ecological, and personal—and acutely particular in details—witnessed and lived—the affecting poems in Particular Scandals explore how one endures suffering, avoiding the clichés of both bitterness and transcendence.

The world’s stubborn strangeness, its painful loveliness, and the search for traces of God amidst its people and creatures—Julie L. Moore braids all of these obsessions beautifully together into these luminous, resonant, unflinching poems, and somehow finds hope for this world among it all.
JEFF GUNDY

Slipping Out of Bloom
The quiet lyrics of Julie Moore’s Slipping Out of Bloom are infused with a sense of wonder at the world’s minute beauty, unfolding their observations and revelations, as their forms / like phantoms / blur between earth / and air.
“What poetry can be made of [those] sufferings none of us want to live the first time around? Fine poetry, it turns out, that offers neither a romantic whitewash nor despairing doubt, but a series of beautiful particulars that offer clarity, beauty, and ‘amens’ in the midst of a world unlikely to change. Readers will be freshly charged to see joy in the scandal of living.”
Leslie Leyland Fields
News & Events
Some News….
My new collection of poetry, Devil’s Backbone, is now under contract with Wildhouse Publishing! Look for it in 2026.
My poem “Ulmus americana” won Fare Forward‘s 2024 poetry contest!
My poem “Disappearing Fence Line” placed as a finalist for River Heron Review‘s 2024 Editor’s Prize!Templeton Hall
Eastern University
St. Davids, PA
Nov. 20, 2025, 7 p.m.
I will be participating in a reading of poetry from Keystone Poetry: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, edited by Marjorie Maddox and Jerry Wemple (PSU Press, 2025). I’ll be reading my poem “Nurse in Need” that is included in this new anthology as well as my poem “Disappearing Fence Line.”Book me to speak, do a poetry reading, and/or teach a master class in writing in-person or over Zoom through my contact page.
Writing
VERSE DAILY & POETRY DAILY FEATURES
- “Bathing Beauties,” Web Weekly Feature, Verse Daily, October 17, 2022, from Quartet
- “Four days after Mother’s Day,” Poem of the Day, Verse Daily, August 24, 2018 (from Full Worm Moon)
- “Clifton Gorge,” Poem of the Day, Verse Daily, September 4, 2013 (from Particular Scandals)
- “Clifton Gorge,” Poem of the Day, Poetry Daily, August 29, 2013
- “Joy,” September 11, 2011 (from Slipping Out of Bloom)
- *”The Painted Lady and the Thistle,” Web Weekly Feature, Verse Daily, May 2, 2011 (from Pirene’s Fountain and appears in Particular Scandals) *nominated for Best of the Net
OTHER FEATURES
- “What to Lay Down,” SWWIM Every Day, February 17, 2022
- “Ode to Katniss,” Autumn Sky Poetry (December 15, 2022)
- “Recovery,” Poem of the Week, The Missouri Review Online (January 23, 2011)
- Many poems featured on Your Daily Poem. The poems can be read in YDR archives
- “Full Thunder Moon” featured on Image Journal‘s Good Letters Poetry Friday blog, with reflection written by poet Tania Runyan (my poem originally appeared in Issue 88 of Image)
- “Moon When All Things Ripen,” Autumn Sky Poetry (August 26, 2021)
WRITING THAT RECKONS WITH WHITENESS
POEMS
- “Colonial Features,” Sojourners (July 2025)
- “Legacy Museum,” in Whale Road Review (Fall 2023)
- 2 Reprints, with historical notes, of “Amid Interruptions, Samuel A. Cartwright Pontificates about Drapetomania to a Friend over Fine Dining, New Orleans, June, 1851” and “Legacy Museum” in Three-Fifths Magazine (Fall 2023)
- “Harlem Sunday” in Reformed Journal (August 29, 2023)
- “Lone Ranger” in One Art: A Journal of Poetry (August 2023)
- “American Vertigo” in Minyan Magazine
- *”White Women’s Tears” in Flying Island *nominated for a Pushcart Prize
- “Devil’s Backbone” in Tipton Poetry Journal on pp. 48-49 (Summer 2022)
- “Ode to Ebedmelech, the Ethiopian Eunuch” in Fathom Magazine
- “Somewhere in Indiana” in Rise Up Review
- “Chorus (of Trees),” in JMWW
- “Suffer the Little Children” in Saint Katherine Review (January 24, 2022)
“Qinaqis Reads Isaiah,” in Sojourners (January 2022) *Award of Merit, 2022 Best of the Church Press Awards, The Associated Church Press - “Underground Railroad” in The Other Journal (December 2021)
- “Hush Harbor” in Ekstasis (November 2021)
- “Ode to Cariol Horne” and “Tornado Siren” in New Verse News (April 20 & 30, 2021)
- “Lesson on Nostalgia” in Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality and the Arts (Spring 2021)
- “Working Backwards” in Tipton Poetry Journal, on pp. 15-16 (Winter 2021)
- “Bony Labyrinth” in Bearings Online
- “American Diptych” and “Amid Interruptions, Samuel A. Cartwright Pontificates about Drapetomania to a Friend over Fine Dining, New Orleans, June, 1851,” African American Review (Vol. 53.4/Winter 2020)
- *“The Color White” in Tipton Poetry Journal, on pp. 6-9 (Fall 2020) *nominated for a Pushcart Prize
- “The National Memorial for Peace and Justice” in Image Journal (Spring 2020), with audio
- “The Red That Colored the World,” in Sojourners (November 2019)
PROSE
- “Elusive Clarity & the Pursuit of Communion: One University Professor’s Journey in Polarized Times” in Three-Fifths Magazine (March 2024)
- *“Spiritus Mundi,” in Doubleback Review (April 15, 2023) *Winner of The Donald Murray Prize in Creative Nonfiction from Writing on the Edge
- “Learning to Long for the Beloved Community,” in Christianity Today (Aug. 10, 2020)
- “Silent Night,” in Relief Journal (2018)
THE PROPHETESS POEMS
- “The Prophetess (Isaiah’s Wife),” Reformed Journal
- “Miriam Contemplates Her Condition” & “Jezebel Calls Herself a Prophet,” Ekstasis
- “Huldah Prophesies” and “Rachel” in Amethyst Review
- “Abigail Grows Brave” and *“Ode to Deborah (Mother of Israel),” in American Diversity Report (Dec. 2020 & Jan. 2021) *nominated for a Pushcart Prize
- “The False Prophetess Noadiah” (January 31, 2022) and “Anna” (December 3, 2020) in Vita Poetica
OTHER POEMS ONLINE
- “After COVID,” Image (Issue 125)
- “Death Wish,” EcoTheo Review (July 2025)
- “American Girl,” Rise Up Review (Summer 2025)
- “Ulmus americana,” winner, 2024 Fare Forward poetry contest
- “Disappearing Fence Line,” finalist for 2024 River Heron Review Editor’s Prize
- “Fire Tower Trail,” One by Jacar Press (Issue 28, July 2023)
- “Bathing Beauties,” in Quartet (Fall 2022)
- “The Weight of Light,” “Easter Snow,” and “Ode to Katniss,” Center for Mennonite Writing Journal
- “Nurse in Need,” in Thimble Literary Magazine (Winter 2021)
- “Cross-stitch,” in Reformed Journal (December 2021)
- “Washing My Daughter’s Hair” and fourteen other *poems in The Christian Century, *nominated for a Pushcart Prize (“Compline”)
- “Photograph, circa 1986” in Whale Road Review
- “Uneasy Peace” and “Trail Beside a Wetland” in Gyroscope Review (spring 2021)
- “Beloved Son” in ASCENT (September 25, 2020)
- “Canary” in One by Jacar Press (Issue 21, June 2020)
- “Speed Reading” in Cumberland River Review (Issue 9-2)
- “Pairing” in Valparaiso Poetry Review (Fall/Winter 2018-2019)
- “New Year’s Eve” in Whale Road Review (Winter 2019)
- “I never met a flower that yelled at me,” New Ohio Review (Fall 2017), with audio
- “Lump” in Alaska Quarterly Review
- “Clear Water” in ASCENT
- “In Which the Magpie Resurrects the Voice of Henry David Thoreau” in The Ekphrastic Review
- “Following the Light” in The Ekphrastic Review
- “In a parallel universe” in The Cresset
- “Nest in a Winter Tree” in Cumberland River Review
- “Big Basin Sagebrush” in the Fall 2016/Winter 2017 issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review
- “Full Hunger Moon” in Issue 5 of Whale Road Review (Winter 2017)
- “Four Days after Mother’s Day” in The National Poetry Review
- “Cooper’s Hawks, Santa Fe National Forest,” in Clementine Unbound
- “Coming Close,” “Sightseeing,” and other poems reprinted in Canary
- “Following the Light” in ASCENT.
- “There Is No Violence Here” and “Ohio,” reprinted in Verse-Virtual (May 2015)
- “No Heaven” in The 55 Project (July 2014)
- “Molasses” in Cumberland River Review (July 2013)
- “Art Affair on the Square” and “Yellow Springs, Ohio” in Flights (2013)
- “Cryoseism” and “Vessels” in ducts.org (Summer 2013)
- “Barn Burning” in Valparaiso Poetry Review (Spring/Summer 2013)
- “This is the landscape left” and “After Watering” in Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built and Natural Environments(spring/summer 2012)
- Three Poems, “Amen and Amen,” “Harnessing Infinity,” and “Particular Scandals,” in Poemeleon (“The Open Issue,” Summer/Fall 2011)
- Two Poems, “Backfire,” and “Voice,” in Switched-on-Gutenberg (“Accidental,” Issue 17)
- “The Grass Grows Ordinary” in Conte: A Journal of Narrative Writing (Issue 6.2, February 2011)
- Two poems, *“The Problem with School” and “Windfall,” in Verse Wisconsin (Issue 103, Summer 2010; *nominated for a Pushcart Prize
- “Press Release: 10 June 2010” in Poets for Living Waters
- Two poems, “Does soil hurt” and “Inspiration,” with audio, in Terrain.org (Spring/Summer 2010, No. 25)
- “One December Evening” in Assisi: An Online Journal of Arts & Letters (Spring 2010)
- “Dirty Nails” and “The Slip” in ducts.org (December 2010)
- “Going Home” in Halfway Down the Stairs
- “Buck” and “Evolution” in Apple Valley Review (Winter 2008)
- “Afterlife” in the Valparaiso Poetry Review (Fall 2008)
ONLINE REVIEWS OF MY BOOKS
- Review: Full Worm Moon in Valparaiso Poetry Review
- Review: Full Worm Moon in New Pages
- Review: Particular Scandals in Christianity and Literature
- Review: Particular Scandals in Ruminate
- Lynn Domina Reviews Particular Scandals
- Ed Davis Reviews Julie L. Moore’s Particular Scandals in Meredith Sue Willis’s Books for Readers #164
- Featured Book, Blogalicious, Poet Diane Lockward’s Blog
INTERVIEWS ONLINE
- Podcast Interview with Rose Postma, poetry editor for Reformed Journal (August 2023)
- “Creative Lives,” Ruminate Magazine, with Melissa Reese Poulin
BLOGS
- My Writing Process Blog Tour, Writer Ed Davis’s Blog (August 18)
- Journey into Poetry, tweetspeak: the best in poetry and poetic things
- Julie Moore’s Next Big Thing, Poet Molly Spencer’s Blog (February 11, 2013)
- Poet Julie L. Moore Talks Writing, Reading, and Inspiration, The Writing Center at PCCC (September 2013)
MY ONLINE REVIEWS OF OTHER WRITERS’ BOOKS
POETRY
- Unalone: Poems in Conversation with the Book of Genesis by Jessica Jacobs, Christian Century
- The Book of Kells by Barbara Crooker, Relief Journal
- Un-becoming by Charnell Peters, Relief Journal
- I Call to You From Time by Judith Sornberger, Presence
- Heterotopia by Lesley Wheeler, Verse Daily
- Whose Cries Are Not Music by Linda Benninghoff, Verse Daily
- Six Lips by Penelope Scambly Schott, Rattle
PROSE
- Once You Go In by Carly Gelsinger, Relief Journal
- The Spirit of Food: 34 Writers on Feasting and Fasting, ed. Leslie Leyland Fields, Christianity and Literature
WRITING CENTER PUBLICATIONS
Peer-Reviewed Article, “Designing Tutor Guides to Enhance Effectiveness Across Disciplines and with Special Demographics,” The Writing Lab Newsletter, December 2009/January 2010, with CU consultants Erin SanGregory and Sarah Matney and OSU Tutor Julie Morris. Accessible at https://wlnjournal.org/archives/v34/34.4-5.pdf and cited in Catherine Savini’s “An Alternative Approach to Bridging Disciplinary Divides,” The Writing Lab Newsletter, March/April 2011 at https://wlnjournal.org/archives/v35/35.7-8.pdf.
OTHER SITES OF INTEREST
- Equal Justice Initiative
- Footnotes by Jemar Tisby
- Du Mez Connections (Kristin Du Mez, PhD)
- Marginalia with Beth Allison Barr (James Vardaman Professor of History at Baylor University)
- National Museum of African American History & Culture
- Alice Alexandra Moore, her art and writing
- The Birds of Malaiseville: Spiritual Discontentment Enters Late Middle Age, the writing of *Vic Ardelle (*pen name) with art work by Alice Alexandra Moore
WORKSHOPS & PRESSES
- Collegeville Institute
- The Glen Workshop
- Festival of Faith and Writing
- The Poiema Poetry Series at Cascade Books
- Wildhouse Publishing
About
I grew up in Moorestown, New Jersey, and transformed from Jersey Girl to Heartland Lover when I came to college in rural, southwestern Ohio, in the early 1980s. After I earned my B.A. in English, I then earned my M.A. in English at the University of Dayton. I subsequently taught for ten years at our nation’s oldest, private, historically black liberal arts college (HBCU), Wilberforce University, an experience that had a profound influence on me. Over the next 23 years, as I then taught at two other religious, Midwestern universities, both of which were predominately white, I integrated antiracist pedagogies and curricula into my literature and writing courses as well as the Writing Centers I directed. I also began publishing poetry and essays.
Although I still live in Indiana, I now work remotely for Eastern University as a Senior Online Advisor and First Year Composition Instructor in its new LifeFlex program. In many ways, this next step in my career brings me full circle: I’m once again advising and teaching diverse adult learners, as I did when I worked for Wilberforce University’s CLIMB program, and I’ve returned to my Philly roots! Likewise, I have the opportunity to use all my scholarship about the intersections between Christian faith, antiracism, and linguistic justice in the courses I’ll be teaching.
But back to my writing life! I spent my childhood years filling spiral notebooks with poetry and stories. Despite feeling “called” to write, I became sidetracked by the world of academia and a genuine enjoyment for—as well as the work load required by—teaching. In my mid-thirties, however, I realized I might die without ever fulfilling my dream of writing a book.
Panic-driven and poetry-inspired, I began to read every contemporary poet I could get my hands on. And I kept reading. In 2005, I also participated in the Antioch Writers’ Workshop (AWW), which greatly expanded my creative thinking and writing skills. I’ve also participated in Image Journal‘s Glen Workshop many times, which was always an enriching experience for me. I consider every writer I read a mentor and the hours spent reading my life-long education.
Some of my work explores “place” in its broadest sense: Some poems revel in the wonder of creation or bemoan the damages it’s sustained, both here in the Midwest and across the globe. Yet much of my writing focuses on the place of faith amid great suffering by contemplating this question: How do I not wallow in my pain or seek to gloss over it with a glib transcendence but rather endure it, allowing it to do its exacting work on me? As part of such work, recently, I’ve been writing about biblical prophetesses and eunuchs, exploring their powerful voices and choices amid impossible situations. I’m also now writing poetry and creative nonfiction of witness. In so doing, I am not only reckoning with my own whiteness but also probing the devastating consequences of white supremacy in our nation’s history and contemporary manifestations, including in white evangelicalism–its churches, schools, and politics.
The poetic exploration of such themes yields an abundance of questions and discovery, including the need to confess our nation’s evils and establish a just society. These are the daunting themes my poetry addresses. And every time I begin to write a poem, intimidation sits on my shoulder, whispering in my ear, “Who do you think you are? This is beyond you. Don’t even try.”
But try, I do. And thankfully, my writing is receiving notice.
Contact
Invitations to read at your school, cafe, library, or festival are welcome!
I do readings in-person and online via Zoom. I also conduct workshops on poetry, essay writing (creative nonfiction), & antiracism. You will find my third-person bio below that you can use to promote the event. You can also contact me by using the form below.
Writing poetry doesn’t pay the bills, to state the obvious. If you’d like to support my creative work, the best way is, of course, to purchase my books for yourself, friends & family, libraries, cafes, & independent book shops. A second way is to contribute via CashApp. You’ll find me there as $julielstack.
You can also follow me on social media:

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Third-Person BIO:
A Best of the Net and eight-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Julie L. Moore is the author of four poetry collections, including, most recently, Full Worm Moon, which won a 2018 Woodrow Hall Top Shelf Award and received honorable mention for the Conference on Christianity and Literature’s 2018 Book of the Year Award. Her other books include Particular Scandals (Cascade Books, 2013), Slipping Out of Bloom (WordTech Editions, 2010), and the chapbook, Election Day (Finishing Line Press, 2006). Moore has won the Fare Forward poetry competition, the Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize from Ruminate Magazine, the Editor’s Choice Award from Writecorner Press, and the Rosine Offen Memorial Award from the Free Lunch Arts Alliance. Moore’s poetry has appeared in hundreds of journals such as African American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Image, Missouri Review Online, New Ohio Review, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, SWWIM, and Verse Daily. Likewise, her poetry has appeared in dozens of anthologies, including Becoming: What Makes a Woman, published by the University of Nebraska Gender Programs; Every River On Earth: Writing from Appalachian Ohio, published by Ohio University Press; How Higher Education Feels: Commentaries on Poems That Illuminate Emotions in Learning and Teaching, published by Oxford Learning Institute, University of Oxford, UK; Taking Root in the Heart: Thirty-Four Poets from the “Christian Century,” published by Paraclete Press; and the forthcoming Keystone Poetry: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, to be published by Penn State University Press. Moore’s creative nonfiction has also appeared in Relief Journal, Christianity Today, and Doubleback Review; her essay “Spiritus Mundi” likewise won the Donald Murray Prize from Writing on the Edge. After directing two university Writing Centers for 20 years, she now lives in Indiana and works at Eastern University for its LifeFlex program as a Senior Online Advisor and Instructor of First Year Composition. You can learn more about her writing at julielmoore.com.
Who designed this site?
The amazing Alice Alexandra Moore!
