Born in Tokyo, half Japanese, Kathleen Hellen is the author of three poetry collections, including Meet Me at the Bottom, The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, and Umberto’s Night, which won the poetry prize from Washington Writers’ Publishing House. Her work has been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Wardrobe’s "Best Dressed," and has appeared in journals such as Arts & Letters, Barrow Street. The Carolina Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Colorado Review, Evergreen Review, jubilat, Massachusetts Review, New Letters, North American Review, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, The Sewanee Review, Southern Humanities Review, Subtropics, Superstition Review, The Sycamore Review, Waxwing, West Branch, Witness, and World Literature Today, among others. She has two published chapbooks. Hellen is the recipient of the James Still Award, the Thomas Merton prize for Poetry of the Sacred, awards from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts, and poetry prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review.