Living most of her life on the coast of Maine, Kristen has long found joy in exploring and celebrating the local landscape. As a poet, award-winning nature columnist, and occasional birding guide/naturalist, she enjoys sharing her observations and encouraging people to pay closer attention to the living world around them.

She received her MFA in poetry from the University of Oregon and has published three collections of non-haiku poetry; her book Transportation was a finalist for a Maine Literary Award in 2012. A grad school obsession with the literary classic The Tale of Genji led in a roundabout way to her discovery of early Japanese poetry, including the haiku of Basho. Later, the mentorship of haiku poet Peter Newton opened up to her the wonderful world of contemporary English language haiku, into which she dove deep. Her haiku, senryu, and haibun have now been published in various journals and anthologies around the world, and one of her haibun was a 2019 Pushcart Prize nominee. She maintains a daily haiku blog, Book of Days.