Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach came to the United States in 1993, from Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, a place where nationality was stamped: "Jewish" on her passport. With that identity, her freedoms and those of her family were restricted by law. Now, every time she writes, she is standing up to the past: defying restrictions, redefining her identity, and speaking with a voice her family never had.
She received a BA in English from the University of Maryland, College Park. Currently, she is a third-year MFA Poetry Candidate and Graduate Teaching Fellow at the University of Oregon. She is the newest Poetry Editor for the online literary magazine Construction.
Julia has been awarded an Honorary Mention in the 2010 Spoon River Poetry Review Editor’s Prize and the 2011 Karen Jackson Ford Poetry Prize. Her poetry also appears in ROAR and Cirque.