Kathryn Smith is a poet and mixed media artist based in Spokane, WA. She is the author of Self-Portrait with Cephalopod, winner of the 2019 Jake Adam York Prize and a finalist for the 2022 Washington State Book Award, as well as the collection Book of Exodus and the chapbook Chosen Companions of the Goblin, winner of the 2018 Open Country Press Chapbook Contest. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, The Gettysburg Review, The Journal, Mid-American Review, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere.

In 2017, Smith received a Spokane Arts Grant Award for her interdisciplinary project “Chosen Companions of the Goblin,” which combines poetry, erasure poems, and embroidery. Her poems have also received an Allied Arts Foundation Award and a Pushcart Special Mention. Her collage and mixed media art has been shown in a variety of venues in the Spokane area. She is also part of Spokane photographer Dean Davis’ Pictures of Poets project.

Born and raised on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, Smith received her MFA in creative writing from Eastern Washington University.

She also makes handbound journals, which you can find at From Here in Spokane.