Kathleen Hellen’s debut collection Umberto’s Night won the poetry prize from Washington Writers’ Publishing House. She is the author of The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, Meet Me at the Bottom, and two chapbooks. Her writing has appeared in the Massachusetts Review, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, The Sewanee Review, Southern Humanities Review, Witness, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. Hellen’s awards include the Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred, and prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review. Her third chapbook, young girl in the flower of time, is forthcoming in 2026 from Lily Press.