New edition, now with French flaps!
Chosen by the American Library Association for the 2015 Over the Rainbow List!
When I Was Straight
I did not love men as I do now.
I loved them wincing & wanting to please.
I loved them trying too hard.
"Julie Marie Wade’s lush post-confessional poems are unabashed in their desire, tentative then bold in their knowledge. They’re sparkly talismans to transform and transport us, delicacies with creamy insides to fill us up. WHEN I WAS STRAIGHT is a profound 'before and after' examination of the self, complete with cultural and family commentary—delightful, heartbreaking, magic and real stories with a multitude of prepositions to guide us: a gifted young poet’s coming to, coming out, coming jubilantly back into self."
–Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seaton
"Wade is a poet with a warm heart and a strong, poetic voice."
–The Rumpus
"When I Was Straight is a thoughtful collection by a talented writer about coming into oneself, and it is a book that can be read again and again. Highly recommended for anyone who struggled on the way to finding themself, or who struggled even after."
–Lambda Literary
48 pages
ISBN: 978-1-938334-35-1
Julie Marie Wade (Seattle, 1979) completed a Master of Arts in English at Western Washington University in 2003, a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry at the University of Pittsburgh in 2006, and a PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities at the University of Louisville in 2012. She is the author of Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures (Colgate University Press, 2010; Bywater Books, 2014), winner of the Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Memoir; Without: Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2010), selected for the New Women's Voices Chapbook Series; Small Fires: Essays (Sarabande Books, 2011), selected for the Linda Bruckheimer Series in Kentucky Literature; Postage Due: Poems & Prose Poems (White Pine Press, 2013), winner of the Marie Alexander Poetry Series; Tremolo: An Essay(Bloom Books, 2013), winner of the Bloom Nonfiction Chapbook Prize; WHEN I WAS STRAIGHT: POEMS (A Midsummer Night's Press, 2014); CATECHISM: A LOVE STORY (Noctuary Press, 2016), and SIX: Poems (Red Hen Press, 2016), winner of the AROHO/To the Lighthouse Poetry Prize selected by C.D. Wright. Wade is a member of the creative writing faculty at Florida International University in Miami and a regular book reviewer for Lambda Literary Review and The Rumpus. She is married to Angie Griffin and lives on Hollywood Beach.
