Kathryn Hunt is a poet and writer and makes her home on the coast of the Salish Sea. Her poetry collection, When You Wake Near the Sea, won the 2026 Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Prize, forthcoming in spring 2027. Her memoir, The Last Chance Motel, was selected as runner-up for the 2026 nonfiction prize by Autumn House Press. She is author of two earlier poetry collections, Long Way Through Ruin and Seed Wheel and her poems have appeared in the Orion, Radar, Missouri Review, Poetry Northwest, and Carolina Quarterly Review. She’s translated the work Catalan poet Maria-Mercè Marçal and is the recipient of residencies and awards from Ucross, Artists Trust, Helen Whiteley Center, Hedgebrook, and Joya AIR (Spain). She directed films earlier in her creative life; her first film, No Place Like Home, premiered at the Venice Film Festival, in Italy. She is the founder and artistic curator of Poetry on the Salish Sea, a poetry series that brings poets from far and wide to the Olympic Peninsula, a lush expanse surrounded by hundreds of miles of deep waterways that run north to the Arctic, home to poetry lovers, salmon, and orca whales.