Keona Blanks is a writer from the island of O‘ahu. She is a recent graduate of Stanford University, where she studied Earth Systems (B.S.) and Creative Writing. Her favorite medium is the lyric essay, through which she writes about place, belonging, and interconnectedness. She is the author of the chapbook Poured into the lake, the lava simply flowed along the bottom of the water like limbs slipping beneath fresh linen. (Cantor Arts Center, 2024), and is published in Mongabay, The Leland Quarterly, and Fronds: A Stanford Anthology of Environmental Justice Storytelling. She is the recipient of the Planet Earth Arts Creative Writing Prize for writing in service of the continuity of life on Earth. At Stanford, she was a Cantor Scholar and Levinthal student of Stegner Fellow Dāshaun Washington. Her current book project, Gobi Dust: A Geomorphology of Belonging has been awarded the Robert M. Golden Medal for Excellence in the Humanities and Creative Arts.