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About Emilie

Emilie Menzel, poet and librarian

Emilie Menzel is the author of the book-length lyric The Girl Who Became a Rabbit (Hub City Press, 2024), winner of the New Southern Voices Poetry Prize (selected by Molly McCully Brown). Her poetry hybridities have been awarded the Deborah Slosberg Memorial Award in Poetry (selected by Diana Khoi Nguyen) and the Cara Parravani Memorial Award in Fiction (selected by Leigh Newman) and have been featured in such journals as The Bennington Review, The Offing, and Copper Nickel. Their writing examines reclaimed narratives of embodiment, gentle hauntings, and fables of the body.

As a librarian, Emilie supports critical librarianship, libraries as active sites of information creation, and librarians as conduits for collaboration and creativity. They work with Duke University's Goodson Law Library as the Collections Management and Strategies Librarian. Additionally, she is the Senior Poetry Editor and Research and Instruction Librarian for The Seventh Wave, as well as the curator of the creative library guide The Gretel. Her library science research explores the information seeking behavior and visual studies engagement of creative writers. 


Emilie holds a BA in English from Wellesley College, an MFA in Poetry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and an MSLS from University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Raised on barefoot Georgia summers, they now live in Durham, North Carolina.

View Publicity Packet Materials

Molly McCully Brown

Judge's Citation for New Southern Voices Poetry Prize
 

Of The Girl Who Became a Rabbit: "I fell into this world of this book—its rabbits, and soft deer, sliced cow-eyes and wolves— the way you wade into a cold body of water, slowly and then all at once. I couldn’t put it down. And, when I finished, I was changed."

The Rumpus

Review by Gina Thayer
 

"Menzel understands the strength and variety of words, the kinds of words that pierce and flay. Kindly words to caress and soothe. She unsettles her sentences, blurring their meanings into something stranger. Complex sentiments feel all the more authentic for their refusal to be clearly articulated, framed behind a pane of glass through which unexpected eyes may peer."

Debutiful

Adam Vitcavage
 

Of The Girl Who Became a Rabbit: "An exquisite book-length poem that is full of fancy and thought-provoking prose. Every page is a masterclass in language. Reading this was an experience unlike any other. I need more books like Menzel’s The Girl Who Became a Rabbit."

Kelly Link

Author of The Book of Love
 

"Menzel is a marvelous writer and cataloguer of what connects and estranges us from our lives."

Diana Khoi Nguyen

Author of Ghost Of and Root Fractures
 

"[Menzel's] images are both seductive and unflinching, electrifying and terrifying. Her lyric is the elixir I wish I could gift anyone who’s experienced girlhood."

Booklist

Review by Sara Verstynen
 

"Menzel pushes the boundaries of what poetry and prose can be and how language creates meaning."

Dara Barrois/Dixon

Author of Tolstoy Killed Anna Karenina
 

Of The Girl Who Became a Rabbit: "If what you wish is to be for a while in a world that will inspire you to think playfully and with kindness and persistence and an openness to that which is not immediately beheld, you have found your book and your invitation to enter another world that happens to be in this one. Menzel works magic. I love this book."

Bookshelf

Interviews

Interviews and podcasts

Click any title to see the source material.
 

"Emilie Menzel on Depicting Animals in Poetry, Learning from Music, and Constructing a New Self" |  Interview  |  2024

"Poetry Corner: Emilie Menzel" |  Interview and Podcast  |  2024

Podcast Reading and Interview  |  2024

The Underline: Writer Emilie Menzel & “The Gretel”  |  Interview  |  2021

“That’s the skill, I think: to allow yourself to fail and learn how to keep going”: An Interview with Emilie Menzel  |  Interview  |  2021

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