Talking With Poets: Julie Lomoe & Robb Smith at the 2024 Word Fest

Hudson Mohawk Magazine

Thom Francis welcomes another married couple to the stage - local poets, artists, and authors Julie Lomoe and Robb Smith, who both shared their work at 2024 Word Fest Open Mic at the Sand Lake Center for the Arts on April 27, 2024. Julie Lomoe has published two mysteries, both inspired by her personal and professional experience - "Mood Swing: The Bipolar Murders" and "Eldercide." "Hope Dawns Eternal" is her first venture into paranormal fantasy fiction and the first of a series featuring soap opera characters Jonah McQuarry and Abby Hastings. She graduated from Barnard College, received an MFA from Columbia University and an MA in Art Therapy from New York University. Her art has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, The Brooklyn Museum, the 1969 Woodstock Festival, and many Manhattan galleries. In 1979 she moved with her family from Manhattan to upstate New York, where she became a creative arts therapist at the now-defunct Hudson River Psychiatric Center. Her full-time immersion in the world of the institutionalized mentally ill inspired her to turn to fiction as a creative outlet. Julie has published poetry as well as articles on home care, mental health, aging, and women's issues. Robb Smith is a writer concentrating on fiction. Robb is the author of more than a dozen published books on photography. He’s a non-theist, humanist pagan, which has influenced his science fiction novel in progress. At the Word Fest Open Mic, Julie read from her newly self-published chapbook, "Proof of Process: Poems from my Slush Pile," a poem in the persona of Donald Trump. Her husband, Robb read a series of Haiku that he began writing for National Poetry Month.