Juliet Kono

Juliet Kono, born Juliet Lee, is a Hawaiian poet and novelist. A former police dispatcher who took up writing while on the job, she graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa before becoming an instructor in English at Leeward Community College. She has also taught at Wellesley College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Kono received a Creative Artist Exchange Fellowship from the Japan-United States Friendship Commission in 1998 and the Hawaii Award for Literature in 2005. She is considered a member of the Bamboo Ridge group of writers and also serves as a Buddhist priest. Her novel Anshu: Dark Sorrow received the 2011 Ka Palapala Po'okela Book Award for Literature.