Julie Elise Landry's poem "At Bay" received an Honorable Mention for the University of New Orleans 2023 Vassar Miller Poetry Award.

Julie will be honored at the Spring 2023 Awards Ceremony for the UNO Department of Language & Literature as well as the Creative Writing Workshop MFA program's Spring Awards Banquet.

The poem "At Bay" will be published in a forthcoming issue of Ellipsis, UNO's literary magazine.

The contest was open to all graduate students at UNO.

Distinguished judge Carol Jennings praised how Landry's poem "is seeing the future and trying to hold it back at the same time."

The 2023 Vassar Miller Poetry Award winner is Karen Chio. Honorable Mention also went to Jessica Bowdoin.

"At Bay" is a love poem about fear addressed to the poet's husband.

After decades of quietly writing poems as an unexamined background process, Julie Elise Landry applied to the University of New Orleans Creative Writing Workshop in October 2021. She was accepted into the Master of Fine Arts Poetry program five months later and begins her first semester in Fall 2022.

"After years of aiming for excellence in my prose, I need to accord the same attention to my poetry," said Landry. "I want to write the sorts of poems that I love: ones that tell meaningful stories and sharpen subtle points, that change the rhythms of our breath, that feel like songs pulled whole, sublime, immutable from the depths of the earth. I aspire to learn and to grow in this arena."

Landry will graduate no sooner than Spring 2025; her journey through the three-year program may take longer, however, given that she will remain a full-time employee while she studies and writes.

The newly self-proclaimed poet hopes to see you at open mic poetry readings in the near future.

Long-time readers will find much to love here: vivid settings, a gripping plot, and the comfort of some returning characters. In his self-professed "most ambitious book to date," Nickens tells an adult story suitable for children, progressing the larger narrative while delivering another memorable fantasy.

"The Lost Prairie BBQ" is the third novel in a loosely-connected series of books, and it is available for purchase on Amazon.

Julie Elise Landry edited the novel and served as a publishing and marketing consultant.

​Teo Skaffa designed the cover art.

On February 27, 2021, independent author Jake Nickens published "The Hinderwood," an urban fantasy novel for young adults set in rural Mississippi.

"One Halloween night, Jimmy [Doe] convinces his older brother Jack to break through the chains and locks on a wooden shed behind the town mortuary," the synopsis reads.

​"By the time Jack rubs the blinding light from his eyes, Jimmy is already gone, stolen away by a pale hand with sharp, yellow nails."

Readers follow Jimmy and Jack as they try to find one another in a strange world, "taking every risk necessary to find [one another]. Because once spirits in the Hinderwood forget their purpose, they fade… or they feed."

"The Thin House" is the first novel in a loosely-connected trilogy and is available for purchase on Amazon. In its first week on the market, "The Thin House" was ranked in the Top 100 Children's Scary Stories on Amazon.

Julie Elise Landry edited the novel and served as a publishing and marketing consultant.

​Teo Skaffa designed the cover art.