Kathryn Smith

Kathryn Smith is a poet and visual artist living and working on the ancestral homeland of the Spokane, Ktunaxa, and Coeur d’Alene peoples, currently known as Spokane. Her most recent poetry collection, Self-Portrait with Cephalopod, won the 2019 Jake Adam York Prize and was a finalist for the 2022 Washington State Book Award. Her other books are the collection Book of Exodus and the chapbook Chosen Companions of the Goblin. The recipient of a Spokane Arts Grant Award and an Allied Arts Foundation award, Kathryn’s poems and visual poetry have been published widely, and her mixed media and collage art has been shown in galleries and used for book covers and broadsides. Kathryn grew up on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, a descendant of white European settlers on S’Klallam land, and her work is deeply rooted in both coast and inland environments. Her poetry examines what it means to live in this precarious Anthropocene moment, exploring such topics as queerness, mental health, class, white privilege, and ecological collapse.