October Project Publishing announces the release of The Intelligence of the Sky, a new poetry collection by award-winning poet, lyricist, and author Julie Flanders, who resides in West Haven. It was made available July 8 in Paperback, Kindle, and Audible editions through Amazon, the book is Flanders’ fourth collection, following Watermarked, Shadow Breathing, and Joyride.
In The Intelligence of the Sky, Flanders explores grief, wonder, love, mortality, memory, and the fragile beauty of being alive. Moving between the intimate and the mythic, the poems travel landscapes of longing and fulfillment, love and loss.
“These poems are meant to invite the reader into a deeper place of self-connection,” says Flanders, “to open the heart and engage the senses in a lyrical atmosphere of discovery.”
Known for her luminous voice, lyrical intensity, and emotional incision, Flanders reveals the cosmic in the ordinary, the sacred in the everyday. The result is a collection that feels both intimate and expansive, grounded in lived experience yet richly steeped in mystery. As in her songs, her poems penetrate deeply into questions of love, loss, longing, resilience, and transformation.
Best known as the lyricist and co-founder of the musical group October Project, Flanders has built a multidisciplinary body of work across poetry, songwriting, performance, and visual storytelling. Her creative work has received four Telly Awards, an American Prize, and the ACDA Genesis Prize. Her poem Doubts was adapted into an animated short film that became an Official Selection at over 30 film festivals, and her experimental short film The Big Sadness, written and narrated by Flanders and directed by Samuel Flanders, received a 2024 Telly Award in Writing. Her award-winning choral works have been performed around the world in such spaces as the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, and Yale.
The Intelligence of the Sky will be available in Paperback, Kindle, and Audible through Amazon beginning July 8, 2026.
A Yale graduate with a B.A. in Literature, and now a Morse Fellow, Flanders is a poet, lyricist, librettist, producer, and co-founder of the internationally acclaimed band October Project. With composer Emil Adler, she has created an extensive body of work spanning albums on Sony Music (October Project, Falling Farther In), independent recordings, and multimedia projects that bridge music, poetry, theatre, and visual arts.
Recipient of the 2020 ACDA Genesis Prize, with Venezuelan-born composer, Carlos Cordero, Flanders’ choral work, Holding Our Breath, was debuted in 2021 by Conspirare (Craig Hella Johnson) and has since been performed worldwide, including at the Kennedy Center (Eugene Rogers & EXIGENCE) and Carnegie Hall, also winning awards for young choirs across the world. Flanders’ ongoing work with Cordero includes, We Are Waves, premiered in Philadelphia in 2023 (Dominick D’orio), and a 2025 commission by the Yale Glee Club, Break Silence (Jeffrey Douma). Her works have been commissioned and performed by distinguished ensembles and choruses across the U.S. and abroad.
The Book of Rounds, 21 Songs of Grace (Sounds True, Hal Leonard), written by Flanders with Emil Adler, arranged by Keiji Ishiguri, recorded by Chorus Austin (Ryan Heller) and premiered in NYC by Cerddorion (James John), has become a widely performed contemporary choral cycle, sung by thousands of voices worldwide and garnering national awards for its innovative virtual choir productions (Return to Me, The Virtual Choir of Joy).
A No. 1 best-selling poet on Amazon, Flanders has published three collections of her poems and originated the October Project Annual Poetry Contest, now in its 8th year, attracting thousands of entries in conjunction with the national “April is Poetry Month” campaign.
Flanders has also written and produced award-winning short films, including the animation, Doubts, (29 film festival laurels and a best voice award), The Big Sadness (Bronze Telly Award), Return to Me (Gold Telly, American Prize), Angels in the Garden, with sand artist, Kseniya Simonova (Silver Telly), This Is For You (Palm Springs Film Festival 2024), and The Virtual Choir of Joy (Silver Anthem Award, Bronze Telly), which featured 163 performers from 15 countries during Covid lockdown.=
Alongside her artistic work, Julie is a mentor and trusted guide to high-achieving individuals across creative and professional fields, including Academy, Tony, Grammy, and Pulitzer award-winning artists as well as entrepreneurs and business leaders shaping new ventures and models of success.