"Anything called red is too dark to write on
but this was the color of the sky that year,
when days no longer fully ended
and every switched-on lamp swelled up
with dark"
— from "An Oral History of the Last Earthquake in the San Joaquin"

Kimberly Kralowec is the author of a chapbook, We retreat into the stillness of our own bones (Tolsun Books 2022), and a full-length collection, The Saplings (Kelson Books, forthcoming 2023). A lawyer by profession, she holds a J.D. from the University of California, Davis, School of Law, and an English degree from Pomona College in Claremont, California.

Her awards include the Patrick J. Hopkins Memorial Writing Award, the F.S. Jennings Prize in Expository Writing, the California Lawyer Attorney of the Year (CLAY) Award, and the Pound Civil Justice Institute Appellate Advocacy Award with High Distinction.

Originally from a small town in the San Joaquin Valley, she now lives in San Francisco and has been named one of the Top Labor & Employment Lawyers in California, the Top Plaintiff Lawyers in California, and the Top Women Lawyers in California. She has won significant appellate victories in her career, including two landmark cases in the California Supreme Court. She has traveled the parallel tracks of legal and creative writing for some years, attending the Napa Valley Writers' Conference five times in the middle of a busy law practice.

Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Inflectionist Review, The Night Heron Barks, High Shelf, Star 82 Review, Birdland, and West Trestle Review. She was interviewed by The Inflectionist Review as the journal's "Featured Poet" in October 2021.

Kim's poetry blog is anapoetics.com. Learn more about her work as an attorney at her law blog, The UCL Practitioner.

Contact her at kimberlyann —at —gmail — dot —com.

To order her chapbook, click here. For the media sheet, click here.