Julie Rae Powers is from West Virginia and Virginia. They come from a working class family of homemakers, teachers, coal miners, and railroad laborers. They received their MFA in Photography from The Ohio State University and their BFA in Photography from James Madison University. Their photographic and written work has focused on family history, coal, Appalachia, and queerness.Their work is collected by the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan, have been awarded the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award in 2016 and 2020 and was selected in Photo Lucida Critical Mass’ Top 200 for 2021. Recently, they were named as part of Silver Eye Center for Photography’s Silver List for 2023. Julie Rae is a part of “Y’all Means All: Queering Appalachian Voices” edited by Z. Zane McNeil. Soft Lightning Studio, an inclusive photo book publisher created and ran by Julie Rae published “The Home We Know” by Ben Willis which was featured in the Washington Post and is collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Watson Library. Additionally, they are the author and editor of a forthcoming collection of Queer Appalachian photographers and are publishing their first photographic monograph, Deep Ruts, via Platanus Editions in April 2024. For their day job they work as an Instructional Designer. www.julieraepowers.com