When I voice-to-text “How long have you been divorced?” and my phone hears “How long have you been a horse?”

Julia Kolchinsky, PhD, is the author of four poetry collections: The Many Names for Mother (The Kent State University Press, 2019), Don’t Touch the Bones (Lost Horse Press, 2020), 40 WEEKS (YesYes Books, 2023), and Parallax (University of Arkansas Press, 2025). Her next book, When the World Stopped Touching (YesYes Books, 2023), is a collection in collaboration with Luisa Muradyan. Kolchinsky is at work on a set of linked lyric essays about parenting her neurodiverse child and the end of her marriage under the shadow of the war in Ukraine, her birthplace. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, and Ploughshares, and her nonfiction in Brevity, The Cincinnati Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review. She is an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Denison University.