Keona Blanks

Keona Blanks, ’24, is a senior from Hawai'i majoring in Earth Systems and minoring in creative writing at Stanford. She is a writer whose work is rooted in the principles of climate and environmental justice, especially those pertaining to her home community of Hawai'i. Through Stanford's Honors in the Arts program, she is writing a book about belonging and settler-colonial positionality through the lens of decolonial studies and geomorphology. In her summers, she has interned in Hawai’i with the Institute for Climate and Peace, the William S. Richardson Environmental Law Program through a Cardinal Quarter fellowship, and Honolulu Civil Beat to contribute to the climate justice space in her local community. At Stanford, Keona has served as a co-director of Students for a Sustainable Stanford, coordinator of the 2021-22 Frosh Service Liaison cohort, resident assistant of the Public Service and Civic Engagement Theme House, and CELC of two EJ Cardinal Courses. Upon graduation, Keona hopes to pursue an MFA in creative writing to continue to write pieces rooted in environmental justice and settler-climate accountability.