Since graduating from Penn State’s MFA program in Spring 2013, Julie Swarstad Johnson embarked upon a career path in arts administration in Tucson, Arizona, a culturally rich city in the southwestern borderlands. Her path has included coordinating education programs for the Tucson Symphony Orchestra–the oldest continuously running performing arts organization in the southwest–and working for the University of Arizona Poetry Center library–a world-class, publicly accessible special collections library of over 46,000 volumes of contemporary poetry. Her experiences in Penn State’s MFA program, paired with prior professional and internship experiences, prepared her to serve Tucson and southern Arizona through the arts by building her knowledge of contemporary poetry, providing her with opportunities to teach both on campus and in the community, and connecting her with a network of successful and effective writers, artists, and educators. Her poetry, artwork, and book reviews have appeared in Bayou Magazine, Mid-american Review, Harvard Review Online, Poet Lore, NewPages and others. Jumping the Pitt, her first collection of poems, embodies and enacts the history of industrialization in 19th century Pennsylvania.

Julie will also read on Tuesday, November 17 — 7:30 pm, at the Bellefonte Art Museum