Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach emigrated as a Jewish refugee from Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine in 1993. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Oregon and is in the University of Pennsylvania’s Comparative Literature Ph.D. program. Julia’s poetry has appeared in Guernica, Nashville Review, and Consequence Magazine, among others journals. Julia’s manuscript The Bear Who Ate the Stars has been selected as the winner of Split Lip Magazine’s Uppercut Chapbook Award, and is forthcoming from Split Lip Press later this year.