Toledo Native to Sign Award-Winning Collection of Poetry, Slide to Unlock
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PUBLISHER: Bryan Borland
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Seth Pennington
PO Box 26147
Little Rock AR 72221
Toledo Native to Sign Award-Winning Collection of Poetry, Slide to Unlock
Alpharetta, Georgia, June 22, 2021 Julie E. Bloemeke, an Atlanta poet and native of Toledo, will be signing copies of her first full-length collection of poetry, Slide to Unlock (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020) on July 15th at 7pm at Toledo Spirits Company. In celebration, the team at Toledo Spirits is crafting signature cocktails based on the Toledo poems in the book. This is a first in-person signing event for the author in Toledo.
On June 12th, Bloemeke was named as the 2021 Georgia Author of the Year Finalist. Fifteen full-length poetry collections were nominated for the award, with one winner and one finalist chosen statewide. Other category winners include former US poet laureate Natasha Tretheway for Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir (HarperCollins, 2021) for Memoir, and Ginger Eager, Nature of the Remains (New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2020) for First Novel.
Bloemeke’s Slide to Unlock was also selected as one of two full-length poetry collections in Georgia for the distinguished 2021 Books All Georgians Should Read Award. Past recipients include former president Jimmy Carter, civil rights leader and congressman John Lewis, and director of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture, Kevin Young.
Bloemeke’s opus has received praise from 2020 Pulitzer Prize winning poet Jericho Brown, Guggenheim fellow and award-winning poet Jane Hirshfield, and James Dickey scholar Gordon Van Ness.
Containing poems that explore place—including a number of poems that pay homage to both Toledo and the Toledo Museum of Art—Bloemeke’s collection also became renowned for its subject matter during the pandemic:
Suzanne Van Atten, book critic and contributing editor for the Atlanta Journal Constitution writes: “In a bit of serendipitous timing, Atlanta resident Julie E. Bloemeke’s Slide to Unlock is perfectly suited for the pandemic. Containing poems written over the course of 10 years, it explores what it means to connect with others in the age of digital communication...Bloemeke’s poems center on various permutations of intimacy from teenage desire to encounters with ex-lovers to the comforts of marriage to a partner who keeps his word.”
Malcolm Tariq, author of Heed the Hollow (Graywolf Press, 2019) and winner of the 2020 Georgia Author of the Year in Poetry, hails Slide to Unlock as “a singing chorus of desire. These poems render a tender overview of what it is at play between the mind and the body, the past and the present, the said and the unsaid. For poems that are so insular and introspective about wanting and longing, they are loud with the vastness of all that the love of self, others, and life can do. This book is a journey worth returning to.”
While Bloemeke’s book tour appearances were postponed due to the pandemic, readings are in the planning for early 2022, including an event with the Toledo Museum of Art.
Bloemeke attended Toledo Public Schools as Julie E. Payne and is also a graduate of St. Ursula Academy.
For more information and further details about the signing event, please visit https://www.toledospirits.com/ or https://fb.me/e/VnFQIN3y
Additional links:
2021 Georgia Author of the Year Winners and finalists announced: https://www.authoroftheyear.org/news/57th-annual-georgia-author-of-the-year-awards-winners-and-finalists/
Books All Georgians Should Read announced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-U_fAWhkIE
Bookshelf: Local poets, civil rights books are recommended reading in April 2021: