Kary Hess is a writer, creative project and event producer, and designer. Her creative work explores how living relationships with people, places and things contour our experiences and who we become.

Kary’s book 1912: Poems of Time, Place and Memory explores how memory shifts in landscape and as author and artist of the SparkTarot® Deck and Guidebook box set, she interprets the enduring magic of Tarot with an accessible, contemporary, and feminine perspective. She’s currently working on new poems for her forthcoming poetry book with FMRL, a Press and Literary Publishing Collective where she is an author and book designer.

As a devoted advocate for poetry and the arts in public life, she serves as the director of the Petaluma Poetry Walk and as the editor of its annual magazine, The Walk. The PPW is an annual day-long festival that brings poetry to downtown Petaluma, CA every fall. She’s honored to carry on the tradition of poet-organizers who’ve nurtured this beloved event since its founding in 1996.

Kary also writes about arts and culture as a regular contributor to the Pacific Sun, North Bay Bohemian, and North Bay Magazine, and is the editor of Made Local Magazine, Sonoma Co.

As a designer, Kary has created work from wine labels to website designs to brand books, and uses her skills as an artist for personal work in drawing and painting.

Her creative work spans visual art, film, and fashion. With artist collaborator Daedalus Howell, she’s created conceptual pieces like Stairwell Video, Le Drama Clüb, and the participatory performance Airport Bar. Their piece Lost Roomba was featured in A Bestiary of the Anthropocene by Nicolas Nova (Onomatopee Projects, 2021, Netherlands). And as a filmmaker, she’s served as producer and production designer on two feature films. She earned her MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts and Writing at California Institute of Integral Studies.

Read Kary’s Artist Statement.