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.
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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.
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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."
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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."
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Pine Hills Review
Interviewed by Regina Rosenfeld
"Menzel’s writing is populated with emotional truths—lines that can’t be unheard, or unseen, or unfelt. But perhaps what I admire most about Emilie’s writing is that it holds space and time for stillness and reflection, all the while ceasing to be stagnant."
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Connect with Emilie
Newsletter: Gingerbread
Be notified of Emilie Menzel's upcoming publications, events, and other news by subscribing to Emilie's monthly updates email Gingerbread. Additionally, Gingerbread includes a curation of writing prompts, poetry, creative library resources, artwork, and gentle hauntings.​
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