Julie Madison Suk (née Gaillard; born 1924) is an American prize-winning poet and writer from Charlotte, North Carolina. She is the author of six volumes of poetry - The Medicine Woman (St. Andrews Press, 1980), Heartwood (Briarpatch Press, 1991), The Angel of Obsession (The University of Arkansas Press, 1992), The Dark Takes Aim (Autumn House Press, 2003), Lie Down With Me (Autumn House Press, 2011), and Astonished To Wake (Jacar Press, 2016), and co-editor of Bear Crossings: an Anthology of North American Poets. She is included in The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry.[1] Her poems have appeared in many literary journals including The Georgia Review, Great River Review, The Laurel Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, Shenandoah, and TriQuarterly.[2]
Suk was born and raised in Mobile, Alabama in 1924. She attended Stephens College and the University of Alabama.[3] In 1944 she married naval officer William Joseph Suk, who later founded the Charlotte engineering services company Polytech Services, Inc. shortly after the couple and their three children Julie, Bill, and Palmer moved from Shaker Heights, Ohio to Charlotte in 1966. For many years she was an artist, painting landscapes in oils. It was not until the 1960s that Suk took up poetry, inspired in part by the work of French poet Saint-John Perse. She has lived in Charlotte since 1966.[4]