Josie Rozell is an analog collagist and poet living and creating in New Zealand, by way of Berlin and Hawai’i. Working primarily with antique newsprint, vintage magazines and nature books, Josie combines her love of paper composition and storytelling to create surreal and unexpected images. Paper ephemera cut from both retro and futuristic sources are recontextualized into energetic scenes that explore the relationship between humans and nature.

 

With a scholastic background in English literature and education, Josie brings a strong sense of narration and accessibility to her collages, guiding her viewer in a quest to embrace the unexpected. To further explore the interconnectedness of humanity and nature, her collages are typically accompanied by poems. Her first book, Articulated Soul (2021), tells the story of living in Kansas, Austria, Indonesia, New Zealand and Hawai’i through verse and collage. It was selected as a Blurb best seller and was featured on the set of High School Musical the Series on Disney+. Her second collection, Deep Breath (2023), is composed of American sonnets and collages and was published by Ambitious Stories LLC.​

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In 2024, she graduated with a master's degree in Polar Humanities under the umbrella of the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at Freie Universität in Berlin, Germany. Focusing on representations of Antarctica in North America, her thesis was entitled: "If Newspapers Could Fly: Publicity and Polar Aviation in America during the Mechanical Age of Exploration." She currently works seasonally as a chef in Antarctica and is the managing editor of The Hawai'i Review of Books.