Kathleen Flenniken earned her BS and MS degrees in civil engineering and worked as a civil engineer and hydrologist before beginning her literary career. Her poems have been anthologized and featured on The Writer’s Almanac and in many journals, including the Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry magazine, and Poetry Daily.
 
Her first book, Famous (2006), received the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, and was additionally named a Notable Book of the Year by the American Library Association. A reviewer of Famous in the Bloomsbury Review described Flenniken as possessing “imaginative, convincing tropes, sense of rhythm and sound, sharp intellect, narrative instinct, and resistance to cliché.”
 
Plume (2012), her second collection of poetry, was selected for the Pacific Northwest Poetry Series. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Artist Trust, as well as grants from Artist Trust and the Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs.
 
Flenniken holds an MFA in creative writing from the Rainier Writing Workshop. She teaches poetry through Seattle’s Writers in the Schools program, Jack Straw, and other arts agencies. She is a co-editor and president of Floating Bridge Press.