Juliet Kono (born 1943) is a Hawaiʻian poet and novelist.

Kono was born in 1943 in Hilo, Hawaiʻi to Yoshinori and Atsuko Asayama;^[1]: viii her grandparents were immigrants from Japan. One of her earliest memories is from the April 1 tsunami resulting from the 1946 Aleutian Islands earthquake; her family lost their home, which was near the water's edge where Liliʻuokalani Gardens is today, and were forced to live near her grandparents, who operated a small sugar cane plantation in Kaiwiki.^[2]: 2–4 She was raised as a Shin Buddhist, and her mother and grandmother were active members of Honpa Hongwanji Hilo Betsuin.^[3]

After graduating from Hilo High School, she moved to Honolulu,^[2]: 5 where she attended the University of Hawaii, but dropped out and started a family, then worked as a police radio dispatcher before she received her Bachelor (1988) and Master of Arts (1990) degrees from University of Hawaii at Manoa; as an adult student, she earned her BA and graduated with her son.^[2]: 5–6 Kono published her first book of poems, Hilo Rains, in 1988, as an undergraduate at Manoa.^[4]

Kono is retired and worked as an English instructor at Leeward Community College.^[5] She is married to David Lee,^[1]: viii who was a fellow dispatcher.^[2]: 5

She took up writing while working at a former job as a police dispatcher, publishing as Juliet S. Kono.^[2] Kono has also taught at guest workshops for universities and colleges including Wellesley College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.^[4]

She is considered a member of the Bamboo Ridge group of writers^[4] and also is an ordained Buddhist minister.^{[2]: 5  [3]}

Kono received a Creative Artist Exchange Fellowship from the Japan-United States Friendship Commission in 1998^[4] and the Hawaii Award for Literature in 2005.^[6] Her novel Anshu: Dark Sorrow received the 2011 Ka Palapala Po'okela Book Award for Literature.^[7]

• — (1988). Hilo Rains (PDF). Honolulu: Bamboo Ridge Press. ISBN 978-0-910043-15-1. LCCN 88-24236. (published as a special double issue of Bamboo Ridge: The Hawaii Writer's Quarterly, issues 37 and 38, Winter & Spring 1988)
• Kono, Juliet S.; Song, Cathy, eds. (1991). Sister Stew: Poetry and Fiction by Women. Bamboo Ridge Press. ISBN 0-910043-22-1.
• — (1995). Tsunami Years (PDF). Bamboo Ridge Press. ISBN 0-910043-35-3. (published as a special double issue of Bamboo Ridge, issues 65 and 66)
• — (2004). Hoʻolulu Park and the Pepsodent Smile, and Other Stories. Bamboo Ridge Press. ISBN 0-910043-70-1.
• — (2010). Anshu: Dark Sorrow. Bamboo Ridge Press. ISBN 978-0-910043-83-0.
• Yamasaki Toyama, Jean; Kono, Juliet S.; Inoshita, Ann; Passion, Christy (2011). No Choice but to Follow. Bamboo Ridge Press. ISBN 978-0-910043-82-3. (special issue of Bamboo Ridge #96)
• Passion, Christy; Inoshita, Ann; Kono, Juliet S.; Yamasaki Toyama, Jean (2017). What We Must Remember. Bamboo Ridge Press. ISBN 978-0-910043-97-7.