Julian Talamantez Brolaski

Poetry Bio

Julian Talamantez Brolaski (it / xe / they) is a poet and country musician, the author of Of Mongrelitude (Wave Books 2017), Advice for Lovers (City Lights 2012), and gowanus atropolis (Ugly Duckling Presse 2011).  Julian plays with the band Juan & the Pines, and their first full-length solo album It’s Okay Honey came out in 2023.  Julian was the 2023–2024 Bagley Wright lecturer, a 2021 Pew Foundation Fellow, and the recipient of the 2020 Cy Twombly Award for Poetry.  Its poems were recently included in Queer Nature (2022), When the Light of the World was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry (2020) and We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics (Nightboat 2020).  Julian is the co-editor of The Glittering Field: A Gathering of New Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Poetry with Crisosto Apache, forthcoming from Litmus Press in 2026.  Xe is currently teaching at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.  

Music Bio

Julian Talamantez Brolaski makes traditional, inventive Americana music, adding poetic lyricism to melodies inspired by some of country and western music’s original recording stars and most beloved sounds. Classical piano lessons, the poetry and queer country music scenes on both coasts, and years spent studying languages gave Brolaski the foundation to create “sweet, cutting, and melancholy” (Country Queer) music with various bands and now as a solo artist on It's Okay Honey, which came out August 4, 2023. As a poet, Brolaski has released three critically acclaimed books of poems that “[push] lyric to its limits, often forcing it as close to music as it can get” (Public Books).