Julie Landsman's first love has always been poetry. Over the past thirty years her poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies. She is presently a poet and teacher for the Alzheimers Poetry Project. In 2019 she won the Bechtel Essay contest for "Music and Story: How We Enter." Her three published memoirs , Basic Needs, A Year With Street Kids in a City School (Milkweed Press) A White Teacher Talks About Race and Growing Up White (Rowman & Littlefield) center around education and her connections to the stories of her students. She spent 28 years teaching in Minneapolis Public schools and the Minnesota Center for Arts Education High School