Julia Koets is the winner of the 2017 Red Hen Press Nonfiction Book Award judged by Mark Doty for The Rib Joint: A Memoir in Essays. Her first poetry collection, Hold Like Owls (University of South Carolina Press), won the 2011 South Carolina Poetry Book Prize judged by National Book Award winner Nikky Finney. Koets's essays and poems have recently appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Indiana Review, The Los Angeles Review, and Portland Review. She has an MFA in creative writing from the University of South Carolina and a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Cincinnati. Koets is an assistant professor of creative nonfiction at the University of South Florida.