Kathleen Flenniken served as Washington State Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014. She won the Washington State Book Award for her poetry collection Plume. Her first book, Famous, won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry and was named a Notable Book by the American Library Association. Flenniken’s other awards include a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Artist Trust. Her third collection, Post Romantic, was released in October 2020.