Julie Marie Wade teaches poetry, memoir, lyric essay, and hybrid forms at Florida International University in Miami. She has published eleven book. Including Six, Small Fires, Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures. As a girl, Julie Marie Wade was uninterested in makeup, boy-watching, and other trappings of conventional girlhood, much to her mother’s disappointment. Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe—movie stars immortalized as feminine ideals —were lodestars that threw Wade’s own definition of beauty into relief as she stumbled into adulthood. Now, in Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing (Mad Creek Books), Wade traces the intimate story of coming of age as a lesbian, only child, and Protestant attending Catholic school. She uses the language and tenets of music, math, religion, fairy tales, poetry, and art to reckon with the many facets of embodiment, sexuality, and love in our contemporary world. The diet industry, popular culture, and her own family all provide rich material for what is ultimately a lyrical and unflinching investigation into the questions that prickle deep within the human heart. Kirkus Reviews called it “Intelligent and lyrical, the narrative mingles often comic musings on female embodiment with insightful observations about the meaning of love and self-acceptance. A sharp, innovative text.”