weirdo — Julia Gaskill
How does one live through trauma and emerge applauding all the good that came from it? In her debut poetry collection, Julia Gaskill strives to answer this question. weirdo is a praise of girlhood through the lens of grief. This book delves into the death of a mother, the loss of religion alongside the discovery of one’s queerness, and the friends who adore you for all your stubborn eccentricities. Simultaneously a love letter and a eulogy to one’s childhood, weirdo walks a tightrope through a muddled youth to find the people who better you, the memories worth holding onto, and the person who came out the other side despite everything.
Julia Gaskill (she/her) is a professional daydreamer hailing from Portland, Oregon. She's competed multiple times on national stages and has toured with her poetry across North America. Her work has been published through Nailed Magazine, FreezeRay Poetry, Knight’s Library Magazine, and more, and she’s had her poetry featured on YouTube channels such as SlamFind and Write About Now. She was included in the 2020 anthology ‘In Absentia’, and she collaborated with the band Impulse Control on the track “Television” off their latest album. Her poem ‘I Will Not Beg For Scraps’ was nominated for Best of the Net in 2015. Julia is the author of four chapbooks, runs the mic Slamlandia out of Portland, co-founded the Bigfoot Regional Poetry Slam in 2019, and is the creator of the spoken word album, Stouthearted Bitch. She is ecstatic to have her debut poetry collection put out through Game Over Books. It goes without saying, she loves dogs and Muppets more than you. Find Julia at @geekgirlgrownup or facebook.com/jgaskpoetry
