I’m Jules Runolfson, I live in Jacksonville, and I have just gone through the toughest years of my life thus far. I’ve divorced, I’ve gone on disability, I’ve gone back to school, and I’ve moved across the country twice. As a result, I’ve come to some realizations about my own desires and abilities that surprised me and gave me hope. This has led me to renew my relationship with my dear sister, who has also survived divorce and serious illness. Through it all, words have given me inspiration and strength.
I grew up surrounded by shelves full of collections of folk and fairy tales next to the works of Shakespeare next to the classics of science fiction next to Austen next to science textbooks next to issues of National Geographic ranging from before I was born to the current month. My parents read voraciously and omnivorously, and they raised us to do the same. My father also wrote poetry in college, a propensity he passed on to me and which came out when I got the chance to take part in the California Poet in the Schools program as a child in San Francisco. For this reason, I consider poetry my native tongue. That said, I’ve also written short stories, and I have a draft of a novel I’ve been slowly revising around other life events. I’ve also written essays on my illnesses and experiences as a female geek, articles on the craft of poetry, and reviews for Strange Horizons, Versification, and The Fix Online. I’ve been telling fantastical tales as long as I could talk, so it was perfectly natural to me to end up in the genre segment of the field, though that wasn’t the expected path for a poet when I started out. I’m hoping to help get speculative poetry better known as a concept in the greater literary community.
My work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Stone Telling, Mythic Delirium, Goblin Fruit, Star*Line, Ideomancer, Not One of Us, Jabberwocky, Lone Star Stories, Space and Time, Sybil’s Garage, Electric Velocipede, Astropoetica, The Sword Review, and Fantastique Unfettered, among others. With Shweta Narayan, I guest edited Stone Telling Issue #4, the Labyrinth issue. My poem “The sky is the floor of an ocean” was reprinted in the limited edition chapbook and art object Chanteys for the Fisherangels, which printed four poems inspired by the beautiful song “Midnight Feast,” by Lal Waterson. My love for the sea, its history, and its lore drenches most of my writing, and I would live underwater if I could. I firmly believe that saltwater is the sovereign cure. I write for people who have survived hard things, whose bodies have turned on them, people who have gone into dark places and come out again. I write for those who look to old tales not for pat “happily ever afters,” but for the wisdom and strength passed down from mothers and grandmothers, aunts and older sisters, queens and witches and beggar women by the side of the road. I write for those who believe in the community of survivors and the support of chosen family. Welcome.
J. C. Runolfson 